With Rimington

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WITH RIMINGTON

WITH RIMINGTON

BY

L. MARCH PHILLIPPS

LATE CAPTAIN IN KIMINGTON'S GUIDES

LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD

37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.

1901

[All rights reserved]

KF30/5G

HARVAkD

UNIVERSITY

L I "M> A r<v

"DEDICAriON

This book is dedicated to the memory of my friend
Lieutenant Gustavus Coulson of the Kin^s Own
Scottish Borderers^ who fell at Lambrechtfontein on
May 19, 1901.

The Colonel in command writes that in that action
Lieutenant Coulson rallied some men and saved a
gun from falling into the enemfs hands. He lost
his life in bringing off a wounded man from under
the enemfs fire. For this deedy the last of many
deeds as brave^ he was recommended for the Victoria
Cross.

I knew him from his childhood^ and on the march

from Lindley to Pretoria^ and thence far south to

Basutolandy we often rode together^ and talked of

West Country sport and his Devonshire home and

faces that we both knew and loved there.

A keen soldier ^ a cheery comrade^ and a brave
and kindly English gentleman^ he stands^ it seems to
mCy the very type of those gallant boys who in this
South African war have died for England,

PREFACE

These letters were written without any idea of
publication, and it was not until I had been home
some months that suggestions from one or two
sources caused me to think of printing them.
They appear much as they were written, except
that sometimes several letters dealing with the
same event have been thrown into one ; and
occasionally a few words have been added to fill
up gaps. In no case have I been wise after
the event, or put in prophecies which had already
come off.

The parts in inverted commas are extracts
from note-books which I used to carry about in
my pocket, and these passages I have left just as
they were jotted down, thinking that such snap-
shots of passing scenes might have an interest
of their own.

It is unlucky from a descriptive point of view
that the big actions and fine effects should all
have occurred during the first part of the war,
leaving the dulness and monotony for the later
stages. During the last six months of my
service it was not my chance to see any important
action, though slight skirmishing was constant, and

▼u

viii PREFACE

I find therefore nothing in the later letters of a
very exciting nature.

Such as they are, however, these letters contain
a quite faithful account of things that happened
under my own eyes throughout the chief stages of
the western campaign. During the early part of
the war many things happened that were splendid
to see and that it gave me great pleasure to write
about. During the later stages nothing particularly
splendid occurred, though the patience and endur-
ance of our men were in their way fine ; but some
things happened which were, as we say, regrettable ;
and these things also are in their turn briefly

described.

L. M. P.

15 Bury Street,

St. James's, S.W.

CONTENTS

LBTTBR PAGE

I. Orange River Camp i

II. Belmont . . • 8

III. Graspan 15

IV. MoDDER River 22

V. The 4.7 30

VI. Magersfontein 34

VII. A Reconnaissance 43

VIII. Scouting on the Modder .... 49

IX, The Advance 59

X. Relief of Kimberley 63

XL Paardeberg — the Bombardment • . . 73
XII. Paardeberg — ^the Surrender . . . -77

XIII. Poplar Grove 83

XIV. Bloemfontein 89

XV. Modder Revisited 97

XVI. Justification of the War .104

XVII. The March North 112

XVIII. Pretoria 126

XIX. The March South 139

ix

CONTENTS

LBTTBR

XX. Prinsloo's Surrender — I.
XXI. Prinsloo's Surrender — II.
XXII. Fighting and Trekking .

XXIII. Written from Hospital .

XXIV. Fighting and Farm-Burning
XXV. The Situation .

XXVI. Plain Mister! .

rxcB

165
173
•85

217

WITH RIMINGTON

LETTER I

9

yj ORANGE RIVER CAMP

Orange River, November i8, 1899.

The sun is just rising on Orange River Camp.
Our tents are pitched on the slopes of white sand,
soft and deep, into which you sink at every step,
that stretch down to the river, dotted with a few
scraggy thorn-trees. There are men round me,
sleeping about on the sand, rolled in their dark
brown blankets, like corpses laid out, covered
from head to foot, with the tight folds drawn over
their feet and over their heads. A few bestir
themselves, roll, and stretch, and draw back the
covering from their sleepy, dusty faces. The first
sunbeams begin to creep along the ground and
turn the cold sand yellow.

I am beginning this letter in the shade of
a mimosa. The whole scene reminds me very
, much of Egypt; and you might easily believe
that you were sitting on the banks of the Nile
somewhere between the first and second cataract.
There are the same white, sandy banks, the same
narrow fringe of verdure on each side, the same
bareness and treelessness of the surrounding land-

2 WITH RIMINGTON

scape, the same sun-scorched, stony hillocks ; In
fact, the whole look of the place is almost identical.
The river, slow and muddy, is a smaller Nile;
there only wants the long snout and heavy, slug-
like form of an old crocodile on the spit of sand in
the middle to make the likeness complete. And
over all the big arch of the pure sky is just the
same too.

Our camp grows larger and rapidly accumulates,
like water behind a dam, as reinforcements muster
for the attack. Methuen commands. We must be
about 8000 strong now, and are expecting almost
hourly the order to advance. Below us De Aar
hums like a hive. From a deserted little wayside
junction, such as I knew it first, it has blossomed
suddenly into a huge dep6t of all kinds of stores^
provisions, fodder, ammunition, and all sorts of
material for an important campaign. Trains
keep steaming up with more supplies or trucks
crowded with khaki-clad soldiers, or guns, khaki
painted too, and the huge artillery horses that the
Colonials admire so prodigiously. Life is at high
pressure. Men talk sharp and quick, and come to
the point at once. Foreheads are knit and lips
set with attention. Every one you see walks fast,
or, if riding, canters. There is no noise or confu-
sion, but all is strenuous, rapid preparation.

Do you know Colonials ? In my eight months
of mining life at Johannesburg I got to know them
well. England has not got the type. The Western
States of America have it. They are men brought
up free of caste and free of class. When you come
among Colonials, forget your birth and breeding,

ORANGE RIVER CAMP 3

your ancestral acres and big income, and all those
things which carry such weight in England. No
forelocks are pulled for them here ; they count
for nothing. Are you wide-awake, sharp, and
shrewd, plucky ; can you lead ? Then go up
higher. Are you less of these things.^ Then go
down lower. But always among these men it is a
position simply of what you are in yourself. Man
to man they judge you there as you stand in your
boots ; nor is it very difficult, officer or trooper, or
whatever you are, to read in their blunt manners
what their judgment is. It is lucky for our corps
that it has in its leader a man after its own heart ;
a man who, though an Imperial officer, cares very
little for discipline or etiquette for their own sakes ;
who does not automatically assert the authority
of his office, but talks face to face with his men,
and asserts rather the authority of his own will
and force of character. They are much more
ready to knock under to the man than they would
be to the mere officer. In his case they feel that
the leader by office and the leader by nature are
united, and that is just what they want.

There are Colonials out here, as one has already
come to see, of two tolerably distinct types. These
you may roughly distinguish as the money-making
Colonials and the working Colonials. The money-
making lot flourish to some extent in Kimberley,
but most of all in Johannesburg. You are soon
able to recognise his points and identify him at
a distance. He is a little too neatly dressed and
his watch-chain is a little too much of a certainty.
His manner is excessively glib and fluent, yet he

4 WITH RIMINGTON

has a trick of furtively glancing round while he talks»
as if fearful of being overheard. For the same
reason he speaks in low tones. He must often be
discussing indifferent topics, but he always looks
as if he were hatching a swindle. There is also
a curious look of waxworks about his over-washed
hands.

This is the type that you would probably notice
most. The Stock Exchange of Johannesburg is
their hatching-place and hot-bed ; but from there
they overflow freely among the seaside towns, and
are usually to be found in the big hotels and the
places you would be most likely to go to. Cape
Town at the present moment is flooded with them.
But these are only the mere froth of the South
African Colonial breed. The real mass and body
of them consists (besides tradesmen, &c., of towns)
of the miners of the Rand, and, more intrinsically
still, of the working men and the farmers of English
breed all over the Colony. It is from these that
the fighting men in this quarrel are drawn. It is
from these that our corps, for instance, has been by
the Major individually and carefully recruited ; and
I don't think you could wish for better material, or
that a body of keener, more loyal, and more efficient
men could easily be brought together.

Many of them are veterans, and have taken
part in some of the numerous African campaigns —
Zulu, Basuto, Kaffir, Boer, or Matabele. They
are darkly sunburnt ; lean and wiry in figure ; tall
often, but never fat (you never see a fat Colonial),
and they have the loose, careless seat on horseback,
as if they were perfectly at home there. As scouts

ORANGE RIVER CAMP 5

they have this advantage, that they not only know
the country and the Dutch and Kaffir languages,
but that they are accustomed, in the rough and
varied colonial life, to looking after themselves and
thinking for themselves, and trusting no one else
to do it for them. You can see this self-reliance of
theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger
and the way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of
the carbines on their hips, the way they hold their
heads and speak and look straight at you.

Your first march with such a band is an episode
that impresses itself. We were called up a few
days ago at dead of night from De Aar to relieve
an outlying picket reported hard pressed. In great
haste we saddled by moonlight, and in a long line
went winding away past the artillery lines and the
white, ghostly tents of the Yorkshires. The hills
in the still, sparkling moonlight looked as if chiselled
out of iron, and the veldt lay spread out all white
and misty ; but what one thought most of was the
presence of these dark-faced, slouch-hatted irregulars,
sitting free and easy in their saddles, with the light
gleaming dully on revolver and carbine barrel. A
fine thing is your first ride with a troop of fighting
men.

Though called guides we are more properly
scouts. Our strength is about a hundred and fifty.
A ledger is kept, in which, opposite each man's
name, is posted the part of the country familiar to
him and through which he is competent to act as
guide. These men are often detached, and most
regiments seem to have one or two of ours with
them. Sometimes a party is detached altogether

6 WITH RIMINGTON

and acts with another column, and there are always
two or three with the staff. Besides acting as
guides they are interpreters, and handy men
generally. All these little subtractions reduce our
main body to about a hundred, or a little less ;
and this main body, under Rimington himself, acts
as scouts and ordinary fighting men. In fact, a
true description of us would be '*a corps of scouts
supplying guides to the army."

One word about the country and I have done.
What strikes one about all South African scenery,
north and south, is the simplicity of it ; so very few
forms are employed, and they are employed over
and over again. The constant recurrence of these
few grave and simple features gives to the country
a singularly childish look. Egyptian art, with its
mechanical repetitions, unchanged and unvaried,
has just the same character. Both are intensely
pre-Raphaelite.

South Africa's only idea of a hill, for instance,
is the pyramid. There are about three different
kinds of pyramid, and these are reproduced again
and again, as if they were kept all ready made in a
box like toys. There is the simple kopje or cone,
not to be distinguished at a little distance from the
constructed pyramids of Egypt, just as regular and
perfect. Then there is the truncated or flat-topped
pyramid, used for making ranges ; and finally the
hollow-sided one, a very pretty and graceful variety,
with curving sides drooping to the plain. These
are all. Of course there are a few mistakes. Some
of the hills are rather shakily turned out, and now
and then a kopje has fallen away, as it were, in the

ORANOE HlVEtt CAMP 7

making. But still the central idea, the type they
all try for, is always perfectly clear. Moreover,
they all are, or are meant to be, of exactly the same
height.

Most strange and weird is this extraordinary
regularity. It seems to mean something, to be
arranged on some plan and for some humanly in-
telligible purpose. In the evenings and early
mornings especially, when these oft-repeated shapes
stand solemnly round the horizon, cut hard and
blue against the sky like the mighty pylons and
propylons of Egyptian temples, the architectural
character of the scenery and its definite meaning
and purpose strike one most inevitably. So solemn
and sad it looks ; the endless plains bare and
vacant, and the groups of pure cut battlements and
towers. As if some colossals here inhabited at one
time and built these remains among which we now
creep ignorant of their true character. The scenery
really needs such a race of Titans to match it In
these spaces we little fellows are lost.

Well, farewell. My next will be after some
sort of a contest. There has been a touch or two ;
enough to show they are waiting for us. A cor-
poral of ours was shot through the arm yesterday
and struggled back to camp on another man's horse.
The dark-soaked sleeve (war's colour for the first
time of seeing!) was the object, you may guess,
of particular attention.

LETTER II

BELMONT

Belmont Siding.

It IS to be called Belmont, I believe, from the little

siding on the railway near which it was fought.

On the other hand it may be called after the farm

which it was fought on. Who decides these

things ? I have never had dealings with a battle in

its callow and unbaptized days before, and it had

never occurred to me that they did not come into

the world ready christened. Will Methuen decide

the point, or the war correspondents, or will they

hold a cabinet council about it ? Anyhow Belmont

will do for the present

What happened was the simplest thing in the

world. The Boers took up their position in some

kopjes in our line of march. The British infantry,

without bothering to wait till the hills had been

shelled, walked up and kicked the Boers out.

There was no attempt at any plan or scheme of

action at all ; no beastly strategy, or tactics, or

outlandish tricks of any sort ; nothing but an

honest, straightforward British march up to a row

of waiting rifles. Our loss was about 250 killed

and wounded. The Boer loss, though the extent of

it is unknown, was probably comparatively slight,

as they got away before our infantry came fairly

into touch with them. The action is described as a

victory, and so, in a sense, it is ; but it is not the

8

(

BELMONT 9

sort of Victory we should like to have every day of
the week. We carried the position, but they hit
us hardest. On the whole, probably both sides are
fairly satisfied, which must be rare in battles and
is very gratifying.

Our mounted men, Guides, 9th Lancers, and a
few Mounted Infantry, marched out an hour before
dawn. A line of kopjes stood up before us, rising
out of the bare plain like islands out of the sea, and
as we rounded the point and opened up the inner
semicircle of hills, we could distinguish the white
waggon tops of the Boer laager in a deep niche in
the hillside, and see the men collecting and mount-
ing and galloping about. By- and -by, as we ad-
vanced, there came a singing noise, and suddenly
a great pillar of red dust shot up out of the ground
a little to our left. " That's a most extraordinary
thing,*' thinks I, deeply interesting, "what land
whale of these plains blows sand up in that
fashion.^" Then I saw several heads turned in
that direction, and heard some one say something
about a shell, and finally I succeeded in grasp-
ing, not without a thrill, the meaning of the
phenomenon.

The infantry attack came off on the opposite
side of the ridge from where we were, and we could
see nothing of it. But we heard. As we drew
alongside of the hills, suddenly there broke out a
low, quickly uttered sound ; dull reports so rapid as
to make a rippling noise. The day was beautifully
fine, still, and hot. There was no smoke or move-
ment of any kind along the rocky hill crest, and yet
the whole place was throbbing with Mausers. This

10 WITH RIMINGTON

was the first time that any of us had listened to
modern rifle fire. It was delivered at our infantry,
who on that side were closing with their enemy.

The fire did not last long, though in the short
time it did terrible damage, and men of the
Northumberlands and Grenadiers and Coldstreams
were dropping fast as they clambered up the rocky
hillside. But that brief burst of firing was the
battle of Belmont. In that little space of time the
position had been lost and won, and we had paid
our price for it. During the march across the flat,
as I have been told since, our loss was comparatively
light; but when the climbing of the hill began,
numbers of Boers who had been waiting ready
poured in their fire. All along the ridge, from
behind every rock and stone, the smokeless Mausers
cracked (it was then the fire rose to that rippling
noise we were listening to on the other side of the
range), and the sleet of bullets, slanting down the
hill, swept our fellows down by scores. But there
was never any faltering. They had been told to
take the hill. Two hundred and fifty stopped on
the way through no fault of theirs. The rest went
on and took it. That's the way our British infantry
put a job through.

Soon, on our side, scattered bands of the enemy
began to emerge from the kopjes and gallop north,
whilst right up at the top of the valley their long
convoy of waggons came into view, trekking away
as hard as they could go, partly obscured by clouds
of dust. We made some attempts to stop them,
but our numbers were too few. Though defeated,
they were not in any way demoralised, and the cool

BELMONT 1 1

way in which they turned to meet us showed that
they knew they were safe from the infantry, and
did not fear our very weak cavalry. We did not
venture to press the matter beyond long shots.
Had we done so, it was evident we should have
been cut up.

Various little incidents occurred. This one
amused me at the moment. We had captured a
herd of cattle from some niggers who had been
sent by the Boers to drive them in, and I was con-
veying them to the rear. From a group of staff
officers a boy came across the veldt to me, and
presently I heard, as I was "shooing" on my bullocks,
a very dejected voice exclaim, "How confoundedly
disappointing." I looked round and saw a lad
gazing ruefully at me, with a new revolver tied
to a bright yellow lanyard ready in his hand, '* I
thought you were a Boer," he said, "and I was
going to shoot you. Tve got leave to shoot you,"
he added, as though he were in two minds about
doing the job anyway. I looked at him for a long
while in silence, there seemed nothing to say, and
then, still ruefully, he rode away. This, you will
understand, was right up our end of the valley, and
I was driving cattle on to our ground, only I had
a soft hat on.

We have plenty of youngsters like this ; brave,
no doubt, but thoughtless and quite careless about
the dangerous qualities of the men they have to
meet. " They'll live and learn," people say. They'll
learn if they live, would perhaps be nearer the
mark. The Boers, on the other hand, such as I have
seen yet, are decidedly awkward-looking customers.

12 WITH RIMINGTON

crafty, but in deadly earnest, versed in veldt wars
and knowing the country to an anthill. Looking
from one to the other, I fear there are many
mothers in England who'll go crying for their
boys this campaign.

Later a troop of us penetrated into the deep
recess among the hills where they had their laagen
It seemed evident, from the number of waggons
and the amount of clothing and stores left behind
and littered in every direction, that the Boers had
not expected to be shifted nearly so suddenly
as they were. There were heaps of provisions,
quantities of coffee tied up in small bags, sugar,
rice, biltong, ue. dried strips of flesh, a sort of bread
biscuit much used by them on the march, and made
at the farms, and other things. All were done up
in small quantities in such a way that individual
men could carry it. There were waggons loaded,
or half loaded, with old chests and boxes, and many
heaped about the ground. Most contained clothes,
and the place was strewn in all directions with
blankets, greatcoats, and garments of all sorts,
colours, and sizes. I annexed a very excellent black
mackintosh, quite new and splendidly lined with
red ; a very martial and imposing garment.

Diligent search was made for any paper or
memoranda, which might show the plans or
strength of the enemy, but all we found were the
love-letters of the young Boers, of which there
were vast numbers, extremely amusing. It never
seems to have occurred to any of the writers that
they could be going to get the worst of it. They
seem to put the responsibility for the management

BELMONT 13

of the whole campaign into the hands of the
Deity. They are religious but practical. **God
will protect us. Here is a pound of coffee," is
about what they all come to. It is the fashion to
scoff at the calm way in which our enemies have
appropriated the services of the Almighty, but all
the same it shows a dangerous temper. People who
believe they have formed this alliance have always
been difficult to beat. You remember Macaulay's
Puritan, with his " Bible in one hand and a two-
edged sword in the other." The sword has given
place to a Mauser now, but I am not sure that we
are likely to benefit much by the change. As to
the Bible, it is still very much in evidence. Not a
single kit but contained one ; usually the family one
in old brown leather. Now it is an historical fact
that Bible-reading adversaries are very awkward
customers to tackle, and remembering that, I dislike
these Bibles.

More practically important than love-letters and
Bibles, we found also a lot of abandoned ammu-
nition, shell and Mauser. Our ambulance parties
were at work in the hills. Several Boers, as they
fled, had been shot down near the laager. We
found one, shot through the thigh, groaning very
much, and carried him into the shade of a waggon,
and did what we could for him. Meantime some
of us had gathered bits of boxes and wood, and
made a fire and boiled water. Tea-cups, coffee,
sugar, and biscuits were found, and we made a
splendid feast in the midst of the desolation.
Horrid, you will say, to think of food among the
dead and wounded. And yet that coffee certainly

14 WITH RIMINGTON

was very good. Somehow I believe the Boers
understand roasting it better than we do.

Before going we collected all the ammunition
and heaped it together and made a pile of wood
round it which we set ablaze and then drew out
into the plain and reined in and looked back. Never
shall I forget the view. The hills, those hills the
English infantry had carried so splendidly, were
between us and the now setting sun, and though
so close were almost black with clean-hacked edges
against the sunset side of the sky. To eastward
the endless grassy sea went whitening to the horizon,
crossed in the distance with the horizontal lines of
rich brown and yellow and pure blue, which at sun-
rise and sunset give such marvellous colouring to
the veldt. The air here is exactly like the desert
air, very exhilarating to breathe and giving to
everything it touches that wonderful clearness and
refinement which people who have been brought
up in a damp climate and among smudged outlines
so often mistake for hardness. Our great ammuni-
tion fire in the hollow of the hill burned merrily, and
by-and-by a furious splutter of Mauser cartridges
began, with every now and then the louder report
of shells and great smoke balls hanging in the air.
But sheer above all, above yellow veldt and ruined
Boer laager, rose the hill, the position we had
carried, grim and rigid against the sunset and all
black. And, with the sudden sense of seeing that
comes to one now and then, I stared at it for a while
and said out loud " Belmont ! " And in that aspect
it remains photographed in my memory.

LETTER III

GRASPAN

November 26, 1899.

We marched out from our Orange River Camp
on November 22nd, and fought at Belmont on the
23rd. On the 24th we marched north again, and
on the 25th (yesterday) fought another action at
Graspan, or, as some call it, Enslin — there is still
the diflticulty about names. March a day and fight
a day seems the rule so far.

At home, when you are criticising these actions
of Methuen, you must always bear two facts in mind.
First, we are bound to keep our line of communica-
tion, that is, the railway, open, and hold it as we
advance. We can bring Kimberley no relief unless
we can open and guard the railway, and so enable
supplies to be poured into the town. Second, we
are not strong enough, and above all not mobile
enough, while holding the railway to attempt a wide
flanking movement which might threaten the Boer
retreat, or enable us to shell and attack from two
sides at once. If we had anything like a decent
force of mounted men I suppose we could do it, but
with our handful to separate it from the main body
would be to get it cut off. " Want of frigates " was
to be found on Nelson's heart, as he said on some
occasion, and I am sure by this time that ** want of
cavalry " must be written on poor Methuen's. So
you must figure to yourself a small army, an army

X5

1 6 WITH RIMINGTON

almost all infantry, and an army tied to the rail-
way on this march ; and if we bring off no brilliant
strategy, but simply plod on and take hard knocks,
well, what else, I ask, under the circumstances can
we do?

Yesterday in the early morning we found our-
selves emerging from some stony hills with a great
plain before us about four miles wide, I should
think, with an ugly-looking range of hills bounding
it on the north and the railway running north and
south on our left. This we had every reason to
believe was the enemy's position; toll-gate No. 2
on the Kimberley road. We went on to recon-
noitre. Rimington led us straight towards the
hills in open order, and when we were somewhere
about rifle range from them, we right turned and
galloped in line along their front ; but no gun or
rifle spoke. When we reached the eastern point of
the range, we turned it and rode on with the hills on
our left ; and now, with the Lancers a little farther
out on our right, we offered too good a shot for the
enemy to resist. They opened on us with, as I
thought three, but others think two, guns, and put
in some quick and well-directed shots, of which the
first one or two fell short and the rest went scream-
ing over our heads and fell among the Lancers.

One point of difference, I notice, so far as a
short experience goes, between cavalry and infantry,
which is all in favour of the cavalry; and that is,
that when they get into fire the infantry go calmly
on, while the much wiser cavalry generally run away.
We retired from these guns, but when opposite the
corner of the range the Lancers got on to some

GRASPAN 17

bad ground in front of us, and we had to halt a
minute, which gave the Boer Long Tom an ex-
cellent chance of a few parting words with us. The
first shell came along, making the mad noise they
do, whooping and screaming to itself, and plunged
into the ground with a loud snort only about thirty or
forty yards off. The gunner, having got his range,
was not long in sending down another, and when
the white curl of smoke appeared lying again on
the hillside, one guessed that the individual now
on his way would prove a warmish customer. It
burst with a most almighty crack, and I in-
voluntarily bent down my head over my horse s
neck. "Right over your head," shouted the next
man, in answer to my question as to where it
burst.

If you are at all interested in ** projectiles,"
you may care to hear that shrapnel is most
effective when it bursts over, but a little short of,
the object aimed at; the bullets, released by the
bursting charge, continuing the line of flight of the
shell, which is a downward slant. There is a rather
anxious interval, of about ten or fifteen seconds
generally after you see the smoke of the gun, and
before anything else happens. Then comes the
hollow boom of the report, and almost immediately
afterwards the noise of the shell, growing rapidly
from a whimper to a loud scream, with a sudden
note of recognition at the end, as if it had caught
sight of and were pouncing on you. It is a curious
fact, however, that, in spite of the noise they make,
you cannot in the least distinguish in which direc-
tion they are coming. You find yourself looking

B

1 8 WITH RIMINGTON

vaguely round, wondering where this yelling devil
is going to ground, but till you see the great spurt
of earth you have no idea where it will be. We
came back across the plain, having more or less
located the position and the g^ns. Rimington with
one squadron got into a tight place among some
kopjes on our right. The rifle fire was very hot,
and at close range. The Major took up his orderly,
whose horse was shot, on his own pony, and
brought him off. For a moment the squadron
came under cover of a hill, but they had to run
the gauntlet of the Boer fire to get away. Riming-
ton laughingly asked for a start as his pony was
carrying double, and rode first out into the storm
of bullets. Several men and horses were hit, but
no men killed, and they were lucky in getting off
as cheap as they did. We then drew back to a
cattle kraal on the slope overlooking the plain,
from which we watched the development of the
infantry attack.

I usually carry a note-book and pencil in my
pocket, partly to jot down any information one may
pick up at farms from Kaffirs, &c., and partly to
make notes in of the things I see. Here is a note
from the kraal.

** lo A.M. — There is a wide plain in front of me,
four miles across, flat as the sea, and all along the
farther side a line of kopjes and hills rising like reefs
and detached islands out of it You might think
the plain was empty at first glance, but, if you look
hard, you will see it crawling with little khaki-clad
figures, dotted all over it ; not packed anywhere, but
sprinkled over the whole surface. They are steadily

i

GRASPAN 19

but very leisurely converging on the largest end hill
of the opposite range. Meantime, from three or four
spots along the sides of those hills, locks and puffs
of white smoke float out, followed at long intervals
by deep, sonorous reports ; and if you look to the
left a bit, where our naval guns are at work, you
will see the Boer shells bursting close to or over
them. The artillery duet goes on between the two,
while still the infantry, unmolested as yet, crawls
and crawls towards those hills."

This is our first sight of an infantry attack, and
it doesn't impress me at first at all. Its cold-
bloodedness, the absence of all excitement, make it
so different from one's usual notions of a battle. It
is really difficult to believe that those little, saunter-
ing figures are ** delivering an attack." They don*t
look a bit as if they were going to fight. The fact
is, they have a long distance to cover before reaching
the hills, and must go fairly slow. Accordingly,
you see them strolling leisurely along as if nothing
particular were happening; while the hills them-
selves, except for the occasional puffs of smoke, look
quite bare and empty; ridges of stone and rock,
interspersed with grass tussocks, heaped up against
the hot, blue sky.

But now, as they advance farther across the plain,
the muffled, significant sound of the Mauser fire
begins. The front of the attack is already so far
across that it is impossible to see how they are
faring from here; but it is evident that our shell
fire, heavy though it has been, for all our guns have
been in action some time now, has not turned the
Boers out of their position. The big chunks of

20 WITH RIMINGTON

rock are an excellent defence against shrapnel, and
behind them they lie, or down in the hollow of the
hills, as we saw them earlier in the day, to be called
up when the attack approached ; and now, gathering
along the crest, their fire quickens gradually from
single shots to a roar. But it has no effect on that
fatal sauntering ! Of the men who leave this side
nigh on two hundred will drop before they reach
the other, but still, neither hurrying nor pausing,
on they quietly stroll, giving one, in their uniform
motion over that wide plain, a sense as of the force
and implacability of some tidal movement. And,
as you watch, the significance of it all grows on
you, and you see that it is just its very cold-
bloodedness and the absence of any dash and
fury that makes the modern infantry attack such a
supreme test of courage.

Of the details of the attack, when it came to
the last charge, we could see nothing. The Naval
Brigade, who had the hardest part of the position
to take, lost terribly, but did the job in a way that
every one says was perfectly splendid. It is said,
however, that they made the mistake, in the scaling
of the hill, of closing together, and so offering a
more compact mass to the enemy's fire. We came
on behind the infantry with our friends the Lancers,
and passed through a gap in the range and on across
some open ground and through a few more kopjes
as fast as we could go. Then we came in sight
of the enemy, and the same thing happened as
at Belmont. A lot of horsemen, enough to have
eaten us up, that were hanging about the rear
of the Boer column, came wheeling out against

i

GRASPAN 21

us, and as we continued to approach, opened fire.
Luckily there was good cover for our ponies be-
hind some hillocks, and, leaving them there, we
crawled out among the rocks and blazed at the
Boers. But this was all we could do. We daren't
attack. The only hope was guns, and it was a
long and inexplicable time before any guns came
up. By that time the Boer column was almost
across the plain, winding its way in among the
kopjes on the farther side, but the 15-pounders made
some very pretty practice at the rear-guard, and
considerably hastened their movements. The Boer
retreat seems to have been conducted with much
coolness and method. They ceased firing their
big guns while the attack was still a good way
distant, and limbered up and sent them on, the
riflemen remaining till the attack was close upon
them, and firing their last shots right in our in-
fantry's faces, then rushing down to their horses
and mounting and galloping off. No doubt, they
exposed themselves a bit in doing this, but pumped
and excited men can't be expected to shoot very
straight, and I'm afraid their losses were light
compared to ours. They have now retired, we
presume, to the next range of kopjes, there to
smoke their pipes and read their Bibles and await
our coming. I suppose we shall be along to-morrow
or next day.

LETTER IV

MODDER RIVER

MoDDER River Camp,

December i, 1899.

We had a great old fight here two days ago, and
suffered another crushing victory; but though I
saw it all, I daresay you know more about the
whole thing by this time than I do.

This is Modder River, deep and still, just be-
neath my feet. It is a lovely, cloudless morning,
and going to be a very hot day. I am writing
my letter on the banks of the river in the shade
of green trees and shrubs, with birds singing and
twittering, and building their nests round me ; it
is spring-time here, you know, or early summer.
Here and there, sauntering or sitting, are groups
of our khaki soldiers enjoying mightily a good rest
after the hard work, marching and fighting, of the
last ten days. From the river-bed come voices
calling and talking, sounds of laughing, and now
and then a plunge. Heads bob about and splash
in the mud-coloured water, and white figures run
down the bank and stand a moment, poised for
a plunge. Three stiff fights in seven days doesn't
seem to have taken much of the spring out of
them.

You would scarcely think it was the scene of a
battle, and yet there are a few signs. If you look

98

MODDER RIVER 23

along the trees and bushes, you see here and there
a bough splintered or a whole trunk shattered, as
though it had been struck by lightning. A little
lower down the river there is a shed of corrugated
iron, which looks as if some one had been trying to
turn it into a pepper-pot by punching it all over
with small holes. They run a score to the square
foot, and are a mark of attention on the part of our
guards, who, lying down over yonder in the plain,
could plainly distinguish the light-coloured building
and made a target of it In many places the ground
is ploughed up in a curious way, and all about in the
dust lie oblong cylinders of metal, steel tubes with
a brass band round one end. These would puzzle
you. They are empty shell cases. The tops, as
you see, have been blown off, which is done by
the bursting charge timed by a fuse to ignite at a
certain range, i.e.y above and a little short of the
object aimed at. The explosion of the bursting
charge by the recoil, checks for an instant the flight
of the shell, and this instant s check has the effect
of releasing the bullets with which the case is filled.
These fly forward with the original motion and
impetus of the shell itself, spreading as they go.
Horizontal fire is easy to find cover against, but
these discharges from on high are much more
difficult to evade. For instance, ant-hills are ex-
cellent cover against rifles, but none at all against
these shells. It is shrapnel, as this kind of shell
is called, that does the most mischief. The round
bullets (2cx> to a easeful) lie scattered about in
the dust, and mixed with them are very different
little slender silvery missiles, quite pretty and

24 WITH RIMINGTON

delicate, like jewellers' ornaments. These are Lee-
Metford bullets. You could pick up a pocketful in
a short time.

The action itself was mainly an infantry one.
Here are one or two jottings taken that day : —

^'November 26th, 7.30 a.m. — We left camp, six
miles south of Modder River, a little before day-
light and marched north. The country is like what
one imagines a North American prairie to be, a sea
of whitish, coarse grass, with here and there a low
clump of bushes (behind one of which we are halted
as I write this). One can see a vast distance over
the surface. Along the north horizon there is a
ripple of small hills and kopjes, looking blue, with
the white grass-land running up to them. It is a
comparatively cool morning with a few light clouds
in the sky and a pleasant breeze. On our left is
the railway, and all along on our right, extending
far in front and far behind, advances the army."

**We incline to the left near to the railway.
The horrid, little, grey-bluish, armoured train crawls
in front. It is dreadfully excited always in presence
of the enemy, darting forward and then running back
like a scorpion when you tease it with your stick-end.
One can see by its agitation this morning that the
enemy are not far off. Behind it comes a train of open
trucks with the famous Naval Brigade, with their
guns, search-light, &c. The river flows somewhere
across the landscape yonder in the plains. One
cannot see it, but a few belts of bushes indicate its
course. It is just that awkward moment before one
gets touch of the enemy. They, no doubt, can see
us (I wonder how they like the look of us), but we

MODDER RIVER 25

cannot see them. They must be somewhere along
the river among those bushes, and probably in
trenches. But where does their main strength lie ?
where are their guns? There goes fire, away on
the right (probably at the Lancers, who are the
right flankers) ; the dull short discharge of Mau-
sers. The train moves forward a hundred yards,
but as yet the men keep their places, clustered in
the trucks. Two officers standing on a carriage
roof watch with a telescope the distant fire. It
has now ceased. A flag-wagger flutters his flag in
eager question. Nothing moves on the plain save
here and there a lonely prowling horseman, canter-
ing on, or dismounted and peering through his glass.
It was three minutes to eight when the first shot
was fired. * This will be a bit more history for the
kiddies to learn,* yawns the next man to me, leaning
idly over his pony."

" It is a half-hour later as the great guns begin
their booming ; that solemn, deep-toned sound like
tlie striking of a great cathedral clock. We moved
forward to the top of a rise overlooking the distant
river and village."

" A dead level stretches below us to the river,
marked by some bush tufts and the few roofs of
Modder River village. The Naval Brigade have
got their four guns in the plain just near the foot of
our hill. They are hard at work now bombarding
the enemy's big gun by the river. This, after
a while, is almost silenced. Each time it speaks
again the deadly naval guns are on to it. At last,
when it does fire, it shows by its erratic aim that
its best gunners are out of action."

26 WITH RIMINGTON

"9.30. — The naval guns draw slowly closer
to the river. Every shell bursts along the opposite
bank where the enemy are. More to the right and
nearer the river our field-batteries are pounding
away as hard as they can load and fire. All the
time the subdued rumble of Maxims and rifles goes
on, like a rumble of cart-wheels over a stony road.
Now it increases to one continuous roar, now
slackens till the reports separate. Now, after one
and a half hours, the fight seems to be concentrating
towards the village opposite. A haze of smoke
hangs over the place. The guns thunder. The
enemy's Maxim-Nordenfelt goes rat-tat-tat a dozen
times with immense rapidity. 'Come in,' says a
Tommy of the Grenadiers who has come to our
hill for orders; and indeed it sounds exactly like
some one knocking at a street door. Now the
under-current of rifle fire becomes horrible in its
rapidity. Can anything in that hell down there be
left alive? Suddenly their plucky big gun opens
again and sends several well-directed shells among
our batteries. The naval guns turn their attention
to it immediately. You can see the little, quick
glints of fire low along the ground at each discharge,
and then the bursting shell just over the big gun on
the river-bank."

" 10 A.M. — Both sides are sticking to the
business desperately. The rattle of rifle-fire is
one low roar. The air shudders and vibrates under
it. Now the naval guns draw towards the river
again ; so do the rest of our batteries. Things can't
stand at this tension. The big gun speaks again,
but wildly ; its shell bursts far out on the plain."

MODDER RIVER 27

" 10.30. — The aspect of the place is now awful.
The breeze has died a little and the smoke hangs
more. It is enveloped in a haze of yellow and
blue vapour, partly from bursting shell and partly
firing guns. Those volumes of smoke, with gleams
of fire every now and then, make it look like some
busy manufacturing town, and the blows and throbs
with which the place resounds convey the same
idea."

"II A.M* — The fight is dogged as ever but slower.
There are cessations of firing altogether, and it is
comparatively slow when continued. The stubborn-
ness of the enemies' resistance to our attack and
to the fearful shelling they have had is calling forth
expressions of astonishment and admiration from
the onlooking officers on the hill."

'*As the circle narrowed and our attack con-
centrated on the village and bridge, we all thought
that the end was coming, and, on a lull of the firing
about 11.30 the Major even exclaimed, * There, I
think that's the end, and I can only say thank God
for it.' But he was wrong. He had scarcely said
it when that indomitable heavy gun of theirs,
re-supplied with gunners, began again ; again the
Naval guns, on a tested range, crack their shrapnel
right in its face ; the batteries all open and soon the
whole orchestra is thundering again. That dreadful
muttering, the 'rub-a-dub, a-dub-a-dub, a-dub-a-dub'
(say it as fast as you can) of the rifles keeps on;
through all the noise of fire, the sharp, quick bark
of the Boer Maxim-Nordenfelt sounds at intervals
and the mingled smoke and dust lies in a haze
along the river."

28 WITH RIMINGTON

It was, all through, almost entirely an infantry
action, but about the middle of the day we were
sent down to the river on the Boer right, as parties
of the enemy were thought to be breaking away in
that direction. And here, I am sorry to say,
poor Parker, who had served in the Greek-Turkish
war, and used to beguile our long night marches
with stories of the Thessalian hills and the courage
of the Turks, was hit, it is feared mortally. The
fight itself continued with intermissions all day,
and even in the evening, though parts of the Boer
position had been captured and many of them had
fled, there were some who still made good their
defence, holding out in places of vantage with the
greatest obstinacy. These took advantage of the
night to escape, and it was not till next morning
that we had the place in our possession. The Boers
themselves, as we are told by people here, thought
the position impregnable. Certainly it was very
strong. The river has cut a channel or groove
thirty feet deep in the ground ; the edges, sharp
and distinct, so that men can lie on the slant and
look out across the plain. A big loop in the river
is subtended by a line of trenches and rifle-pits
hastily dug (they only decided twenty-four hours
before the attack to defend the position ; this by
Cronj6*s advice, who had just come south from
Mafeking, the others were for retiring to the next
range of hills), from which the whole advance of
our infantry across the level is commanded. '* We,"
as the soldiers explained to me, *' could see nothing
in our front but a lot of little heads popping up to
fire and then popping down again." These shelters,

MODDER RIVER 29

a long line of them, are littered thick with empty
cartridge cases, hundreds in each ; one thinks in-
voluntarily of grouse-driving. Bodies, still un-
buried, lay about when I was there. Such odours !
such sights ! The unimaginable things that the
force of shot and shell can do to poor, soft, human
flesh. I saw soldiers who had helped to do the
work turn from those trenches shaking.

LETTER V

THE FOUR POINT SEVEN

MODDER River Camp,
December 1899.

A FEW days ago we welcomed a distinguished
stranger here in the shape of a long 4.7 naval
gun. They set him up in the road just outside
the station, with his flat-hatted sailors in zealous
attendance, where he held a day-long lev6e. The
gun is a remarkable object among the rest of our
artillery. Its barrel, immensely long but very
slender, has a well-bred, aristocratic look compared
with the thick noses of our field-guns. It drives
its forty-five pound shell about seven miles, and
shoots, I am told, with perfect accuracy. It is
an enlarged edition of the beautiful little twelve-
pounders which we have hitherto been using, and
which exceed the range of our fifteen-pounder field-
guns by about a half. Why should naval guns be
so vastly superior to land ones ?

I interviewed the sailors on the accomplishments
of the new-comer, and on the effects especially of
lyddite, about which we hear so much. One must
allow for a little friendly exaggeration, but if the
mixture of truth is in any decent proportion, I
should say that spades to bury dead Boers with
are all the weapons that the rest of us will require
in future. The gun uses shrapnel as well, but

THE FOUR POINT SEVEN 31

relies for its main effects on lyddite. As for this
horrible contrivance, all I can say is that the
Geneva Conference ought to interdict it. The
effects of the explosion of a lyddite shell are as
follows: — Any one within 50 yards is obliterated,
blown clean away. From 50 to 100 yards they
are killed by the force of the concussion of the
air. From 100 to 150 yards they are killed by
the fumes or poisonous gases which the shell ex-
hales. From 150 to 200 they are not killed, but
knocked senseless, and their skin is turned to a
brilliant green colour. From 200 to 250 they are
so dazed and stupefied as to be incapable of action,
and, generally speaking, after that any one in the
district or neighbourhood of the shock is "never
the same man again." This is no mere rumour, for
I have it direct from the naval gunners themselves.
This morning, well before light, we took out our
gentleman, dragged by an immense string of oxen,
to introduce him to his future victims and whet his
appetite by a taste. The Boer position lies some
six miles to the north of the river. The most con-
spicuous feature of it is a hill projecting towards us
like a ship's ram and dipping sharply to the plain.
Magersfontein, they call it. The railway going
north leaves it to the right, but other hills and
kopjes carry on the position westward across the
railway, barring an advance. It is evident that we
shall have to take the place in front, as we are not
strong enough nor mobile enough to go round.

We have a few reinforcements, notably the High-
land Brigade, also the 12th Lancers under Airlie,
and some Horse Artillery pop-guns.

32 WITH RIMINGTON

There is a good deal of bush on the plain, espe-
cially to the right of the steep hill, where it is
quite thick. During the last week we have been
poking about in this a good deal, approaching the
hill now on this side, now on that, under cover of
the scrub, examining and searching, but with very
little result They keep themselves well hidden.
The hills look untenanted except that now and then
we have seen parties of Boers wending their way
in between the kopjes and driving in herds of catde.

In the thick bush on the eastern plain, as we lay
one morning at daybreak, we could hear the shouts
of men and catch glimpses of them here and there
riding about and urging their cattle on. Some
passed not far from where we lay crouched (we had
left our ponies on the outskirts of the bush). It
seemed funny to watch them riding to and fro, un-
conscious of our presence and calling to each other.
It reminded me of some boys' game of hide-and-
seek or Tom Tiddler's ground. We have had two
or three casualties, and lost two prisoners, and we
have bagged several of them. The army is resting.

Well, this morning, as I was saying, we take our
Long Tom (Joey, as he is now called, out of com-
pliment to Chamberlain) out for a shot Here is
a note about it : —

"4.30 A.M. — Our little groups of horse, in threes
and fours, are clustered behind bushes. There is a
whispered consultation round our large gun and his
nose slowly rises. The jerk of the lanyard is fol-
lowed by a frightful explosion and then comes the
soaring noise of the flying shell and the red spark
and column of dust on the kopje. The range has

THE FOUR POINT SEVEN 33

been well judged, for the first shot falls with beautiful
accuracy just on the hill where they are supposed
to be.

" It is worth getting up at this time to enjoy the
delicious, pure, and fresh air. The glow of sunrise
is in the sky, but not yet the sun. There are some
long streaks and films of rosy cloud along the
east. Already, after five shots, the whole kopje is
enveloped in dust and reddish smoke from the
bursting lyddite, but elsewhere between us and the
sunrise the hills are a perfect dark blue, pure blocks
of the colour. The Lancers on their horses show
black against the sky as they canter, scattering
through the underwood with graceful slanting lances.
At slow deliberate intervals the long gun tolls.
Dead silence is the only reply. The sun rises and
glares on the rocky hills. Not a living thing is to
be seen."

LETTER VI

MAGERSFONTEIN

MODDER River Camp,

December 13, 1899.

When we were camped a day's march south of this,
two Boers brought in a wounded man of ours in a
Cape cart. " You will never get to Kimberley,"
they said to us. "It will take better men than you
to stop us," said we. " Not a bit of it," said they,
and off they drove. As it turns out, they were
nearer the mark than we were.

While I write this, early on the morning of the
13th, you at home may just be reading in the papers
the accounts of our last two days' disastrous fighting.
It was a defeat, but yet it was a defeat which was
not felt nor realised by the bulk of the^ army. It
was a blow that fell entirely on one brigade, and
the greater part of our force was still awaiting the
order to advance, and expecting to engage the
enemy when already the attack, unknown to us,
had been delivered and repulsed.

Last Sunday, December loth, about 2 p.m., we

moved out of camp northward towards the point

of the big hill, that, like a cape, juts south into

the plain. With all our guns ranged about the

point of the hill, we then proceeded to thrash and

batter it with shell-fire. No gun-fire that we have

had as yet has approached this for rapidity. The

34

MAGERSFONTEIN 35

batteries roared ceaselessly from the plain ; the big
4.7 lifting up its voice from a little in the rear high
above the din. The day was cloudy, and rain fell
at intervals, but towards the evening it cleared.
My troop was on the extreme left front, on the west
side of the hill, and we had a fine view of the effect
as the shells burst one after another, or sometimes
three or four together, all along the hill flank, up
on the crest, or in the plain along the base.

" 5 P.M. — The hill is all one heavy dull hue in
the sombre evening light, and against it the sharp
glints of fire as the shrapnel bursts, and the round
puff-balls of white smoke show vividly. Every
now and then a great curtain of murky vapour goes
up to show where the old lyditte-slinger in the rear
is depositing his contributions. We had three field-
batteries engaged, the naval twelve-pounders, Joey,
and the pop-guns; about thirty guns altogether."

We slept that night by the side of the railway,
tethering our horses to the wire fence that runs down
it. Rain fell heavily all night. Most of us had no
blankets, and we lay bundled up, shivering under
our greatcoats on the sopping ground. Unable to
sleep well, I heard, just about or before dawn, a
distant drumming, like the noise of rain on the
window, but recognised immediately as distant
rifle-fire. Morning broke, cheerless and wet. I
asked if any one had heard firing during the
night, but no one near me had. Shivering and
breakfastless, save for a morsel of biscuit and a sip
of muddy water, we saddle our dripping horses
and fall in. A Tommy sitting in the ditch, the
picture of misery ; cold, and hungry, with the rain

36 WITH RIMINGTON

trickling from his sodden helmet on to his face ;
breaks into a hymn, of which the first verse
runs : —

" There is a happy land
Far, far away,
Where they get ham and eggs
Three times a day."

I find myself dwelling on the words as we move
off. Can there be such a land ? Can there be so
blessed a place ?

We reach the ganger's hut, and the light spreads
and rests on the hills. Immediately we are deaf-
ened by a shattering report close behind us, and
starting round, find the long nose of Joey projecting
almost over our heads, while the scream of the shell
dies away in the distance as it speeds towards the
Boer hill. One of the naval officers gives me a
first hint of the truth. There has certainly been an
attack, he says, but he fears unsuccessful.

We took the matter up, then, where we left
off yesterday, all our batteries coming into action
and shelling the hills most furiously. The enemy
replied with three guns only, but so well placed
were they that we found it impossible to silence
them. While our fire was concentrated on to any
one of them, it would remain silent, but, after a
short interval, would always begin again, to the
rage of our gunners. There is especially a big
gun of theirs in a fold of the hill just at the crest,
between which and '*Joey" exist terms of mortal
defiance. Nothing else it appears can touch either
of them ; so while the lesser cannonade rages in
the middle, these two lordly creatures have a duel

MAGERSFONTEIN 37

of their own and exchange the compliments of the
season with great dignity and deliberation over the
others' heads. It has gone all in favour of "Joey"
while I was watching, the Boer gun being rather
erratic and most of its shells falling short. It made
one good shot just in front of us, and it was really
comic to see how "Joey," who had been looking
for other adversaries for the moment, came swing-
ing round at the voice of his dearest foe. The
explosion of the big gun almost knocks one back-
wards, and I feel the sudden pressure on my ears
of the concussion.

Later in the day "Joey" and I got quite thick.
There is a double kopje, detached from the main
Boer position on our side, known as the Dumbell
Kopje. From our left-front place we could see a
lot of Boers clustered under the hill, pasted, like
swarming bees, up against the lee of it, while the
naval gun's shells — for he evidently had a non-
chalant idea that there was some one about there
— went flying overhead and bursting beyond. This
was very irritating to watch, and I was glad to be
sent back to "whisper a word in his ear." Making
a hasty sketch of the hill, I galloped back and pre-
sented it to the captain with explanation, and had
the satisfaction of seeing 300 yards knocked off
"Joey's" next shot, which was, I should judge, a
very hot one. *'Stay and have some grub," said
the jolly naval captain. We sat on the ground
eating and drinking, while "Joey" peppered the
Dutchmen.

As for the fight itself, people seem inclined to
make a great mystery about it and talk about "the

38 WITH RIMINGTON

difficulty of getting at the truth ; " but I don't see
myself where the mystery comes in. What hap-
pened was this. The Highland Brigade (Black
Watch, Seaforths, Argyle and Sutherlands, and
Highland Light Infantry) was told off for the night
attack and marched before light to the hill. The
night was very dark and heavy rain falling. The
ground was rough, stony, and rocky, with a good
deal of low scrub, bushes, and thorn trees, very
difficult to get through at night. The difficulty of
moving masses of men with any accuracy in the
dark is extreme, and to keep them together at all
it was necessary for them to advance in a compact
body. In quarter column, therefore, the Brigade
advanced and approached the foot of the hill. I
have noticed several times that when you get
rather close to the hill the rise comes to look more
gradual and the ridge itself does not stand up in
the abrupt and salient way that it does from a
distance. Whether it was this, or simply that the
darkness of the night hid the outline, at any rate
the column approached the hill and the trench
which runs at the foot of the hill much too closely
before the order to extend was given. When it
was given it was too late. They were in the act of
executing it when the volley came.

Of course an attack like this cannot be in-
tended altogether as a surprise — that is, it cannot
be pushed home as a surprise. You cannot march
4000 heavy-booted men through broken ground
on a dark night without making plenty of noise
over it; also the Boers must certainly have had
pickets out, which would have moved in as we

MAGERSFONTEIN 39

advanced and given the alarm. But had our
fellows deployed at half a mile, or less, under
cover of darkness, and then advanced in open
order, the enemy could not have seen clearly
enough to shoot with accuracy until they were
fairly close, and I daresay the fire then would
not have stopped their rush.

As it was, the fire came focussed on a mass
of men, such a fire as I suppose has never been
seen before, for not only was it a tremendous
volley poured in at point-blank range, but it was
a sustained volley ; the rapid action of the maga-
zines enabling the enemy to keep up an unin-
termittent hail of bullets on the English column.
To advance under fire of this sort is altogether
impossible. It is not a question of courage, but
of the impossibility of a single man surviving.
At the Modder fight our men advanced to a cer-
tain distance, but could get no nearer. They were
forced to lie down and remain lying down. The
fire of magazine rifles is such that, unless helped
by guns or infinitely the stronger, the attackers
have no chance of getting home. People will keep
on talking as if courage did these things. What
the devil's the use of the bravest man with half-
a-dozen bullets through him ? It is just as certain
as anything can be that, if the Highlanders had
*'gone on," in two minutes not a man would have
been left standing. Already in the brief instant
that they stood, dazed by the fire, they lost be-
tween six and seven hundred men. The Black
Watch was in front, and nineteen out of twenty-
seven officers were swept down. You might as

I

t

I

40 WITH RIMINGTON

well talk of ** going on" against a volcano in
eruption.

I am writing this on the day after the action
in my favourite lurking-place by the side of the
river under the evergreens and big weeping wil-
lows that overhang the sluggish water. Our own
small camp is close to the stream, and here every
morning the I Highlanders are in the habit of turn-
ing up, usually with much laughing and shouting,
to bathing parade. There is no laughing this
morning, only sad, sullen faces, silence and down-
cast looks. Still they are glad to talk of it. A
few come under the shade of my tree, and sit
about and tell me the little bit that each saw or
heard. You only get a general impression of
chaos. Some tried to push on, some tried to
extend, some lay down, and some ran back out
of close range and took up such cover as they
could get. This was, luckily, pretty good, there
being a lot of bush and rocks about, and here
they gradually crawled together and got into some
sort of order, and kept up a counter fire at the
Boer position. The Brigade, however, had been
badly shaken, and as hour after hour passed all
through the blazing day, and they were kept lying
there under the fire of an entrenched enemy, ex-
hausted and parched with thirst, their patience
gradually failed, and they made another rush back,
but were rallied and led up again to where the
Mausers might play on them. They were not
allowed to retire till after five, when all the troops
were withdrawn — that is, until they had been shot
over at close range for about fourteen mortal hours.

MAGERSFONTEIN 41

The Brigade was asked to do too much, and
when at last they staggered out of action, the
men jumped and started at the rustle of a twig.
It's a miserable thing when brave men are asked
to do more than brave men can do.

One thing that added to the panic was that
none, at least among the men and junior officers,
knew anything at all about the trench. They
thought they were going to storm the hill. So that
things were so contrived that the bewilderment of a
surprise should be added to the terrors of the volley.
You will scarcely believe this perhaps. I have just
come from having tea with the Argyle and Suther-
land. Of the eight or ten officers there, not one
had heard of the trench. Here, by the river, I
have talked to a score of Highlanders, and not one
had heard of it either. They " didn't know what
the hell was up " when the volley came. We could
scarcely have provided all the elements of a panic
more carefully.

Nothing of note followed during the day.
Airlie fended off a Boer flanking move on our right,
and the Coldstreams backed up the Highlanders a
bit, but practically only the Highland Brigade was
in it. It was a disaster to that Brigade only, and
consequently the rest of the army does not feel itself
defeated, and is not in any way discouraged. Some
people suggest now that we in our turn may be
attacked, and that the enemy may try and retake
the river position from which we shifted him a
fortnight ago. It is reported that they have got up
heavy reinforcements from Natal, and some long-
range guns that will reach our camp from the hill.

44 WITH RIMINGTON

All kinds of rumours are afloat, mostly to the effect
that the Boers are circling round behind us, via
Douglas on the west and Jacobsdal on the east, and
mean cutting our communications. However, as I
have long since found out, a camp is a hot-bed of
lies. Nothing positive is known, for every one is
kept in careful ignorance of everything that is going
on. The idea is that the British soldier can only
do himself justice when the chance of taking any-
thing like an intelligent interest in his work is
altogether denied him. The consequence is he is
driven to supply the deficiency out of his own
imagination. Ladysmith has already been taken
and relieved at least a dozen times, and Mafeking
almost as often. To-day BuUer is on his way to
Pretoria ; to-morrow the Boer army will be march-
ing on Cape Town.

As for our own little army, we have been
digging ourselves in here, and are perfectly secure,
and I daresay we shall be able to keep open the
line all right. As to relieving Kimberley, that is
another thing. Cronj6 evidently doesn't think we
can, for he has just sent us in a message offering us
twenty-four hours to clear out in. He is a bit of a
wag is old Crpnj6.

LETTER VII

m

A RECONNAISSANCE

Bivouac on the Modder,

January 15, IQCX).

At Modder River camp the dust lies thick and
heavy. Every breeze that blows lifts clouds of it,
that hang in the air like a dense London fog, and
mark the site of the camp miles and miles away.
The river, more muddy than ever, moves languidly
in its deep channel. There is a Boer laager some
miles above the camp, the scourings of which —
horrid thought ! — ^are constantly brought down to us.
The soldiers eye the infected current askance and
call it Boervril. Its effect is seen in the sickness
that is steadily increasing.

Thank goodness we escape it. An advantage
of scouting is, that, when it comes to a standing
camp, with its attendant evils of dirt, smells, and
sickness, your business carries you away, in front,
or out along the flanks, where you play at hide-
and-seek with the enemy, trap and are trapped,
chase and are chased, and where you bivouac
healthily and pleasantly, if not in such full secu-
rity, at some old Dutch farm, where probably
fowls are to be bought, or milk and butter ; or
under groups of mimosa trees among stoney
deserted kopjes, where there is plenty of wood

for burning, as likely as not within reach of some

43

44 WITH RIMINGTON

old garden with figs in it ripening and grapes
already ripe.

One of the little pictures I shall remember be-
longing to Modder camp is the sight of the soldiers
at early mass. You can picture to yourself a wide,
flat dusty plain held in the bent arm of the river,
with not a tree or bush on it ; flat as a table, ankle-
deep in grey dust, and with a glaring, blazing sun
looking down on it The dust is so hot and deep
that it reminds one more of the ashes on the top
of Vesuvius — you remember that night climb of
ours ? — than of anything else.

Laid out in very formal and precise squares are
the camps of the various brigades, the sharp-pointed
tents ranged in exact order and looking from far off
like symmetrical little flower-beds pricked out on
the sombre plain.

A stone's throw from the river is a mud wall,
with a mud house at one side scarcely rising above
it, yet house and wall giving in the early morning
a patch of black shadow in the midst of the glare.
Here the old priest used to celebrate his mass. A
hundred or two of Tommies and a few officers would
congregate here soon after sunrise, and stand bare-
headed till the beams looked over the wall, when
helmet after helmet would go on ; or kneel together
in the dust while the priest lifted the host. Every
man had his arms, the short bayonet bobbing on
the hip ; every brown and grimy hand grasped a
rifle ; and as the figures sink low at the ringing of
the bell, a bristle of barrels stands above the bowed
heads. Distant horse hoofs drum the plain as an
orderly gallops from one part of the camp to another.

A RECONNAISSANCE 45

Right facing us stands Magersfontein, its ugly nose
with the big gun at the end of it thrust out towards
us. How many of this little brotherhood under
the mud wall, idly I wonder, will ever see English
meadows again ?

The Boers still face us at Magersfontein. Their
left is south of the M odder. They have a strong
laager at Jacobsdal on the Reit, and have pushed
west and south of that, where, from the kopjes
about Zoutspan and Ramdam, they threaten our lines
of communication. The Reit river, flowing almost
south and north for some distance parallel to the
railway, though a good way east of it, is a strengthen-
ing feature for them in that part of the field, and
taking advantage of it, they have brought their left
well round. Their right, on the other hand, is
scarcely brought round at all, but stretches about
east and west, following the course of the Modder,
and extending as far west as Douglas, fifty miles
from Modder camp. They make raids south.
Pilcher the other day cut some of them up at
Sunny side and took Douglas, but evacuated it again,
and it is now in their hands. Altogether you can
compare the Boer attitude to a huge man confront-
ing you, Magersfontein being his head, his left arm
brought round in front of him almost at right angles
to his body and his right stretched wide out in line
with his shoulders. From time to time he makes
little efforts to bring these outstretched arms farther
round, as if to clasp and enfold the British position
at Modder River, and it is with the special object
of observing and reporting on these movements
that our scouting is carried on. This is now

46 WITH RIMINGTON

attended to by fifteen of us only, under Chester
Master, the rest of the corps, with the Major, having
gone down to join French at Colesberg now that
the advance here has ceased. On the east side of
the line we patrol the plain nearly to Jacobsdal, and
often lie in the grass or sit among the rocks and
watch the litde figures of Boers cantering along the
road that leads south by the river. Further scout-
ing in that direction is carried on by the garrison
along the line.

A strong reconnaissance of ours the other day
(January 9th) in the direction of Jacobsdal was a
very dignified and solemn exhibition. Our guns
rumbled forward with their eight-horse teams across
the plain, while our cavalry, stretched out in open
order at fifty yards apart, traversed the country in
long strings that might have been seen and admired
by the enemy at a distance, I daresay, of twenty miles.
Chester Master took us forward on the left close to
the river, where a party of the enemy, stealing up
from the river-bed, tried to cut us off — there were
only six or eight of us — and chivied us back to the
main body as hard as we could go, two miles ventre
d terre through the pelting rain, blazing away from
horseback all the time at us, but naturally doing no
harm. We thought we should lead them into a
trap when we lifted the rise, but our troops had all
halted far back in the plain, and our pursuers turned
as soon as they saw them. However, we got some
men to join us, and set to work to chase them as
they had done us. It was really quite exciting;
little bent figures of horsemen with flapping hats on
ahead, bundling along for dear life, each with its

A RECONNAISSANCE 47

spot of dust attending, we following, whooping and
spurring. But bustled as they were, the Boers
knew the way they were going. There are some
narrow belts of bush that run out from the river
into the plain, and as we neared one of these, crick-
crack, crick-crack, the familiar croaking voices of
Mausers warned us against a nearer approach.
We dismounted and fired away vaguely at the dis-
tant foe, not so much with the idea of hitting any-
thing, but it is always a relief to one's feelings. I
don t know why the guns didn't come up, but was
told that they didn't like to push on too far, as the
Boers were supposed to be in force here. It seemed
a pity to miss such a good shot, especially as we
had an enormous great escort and an open country
back to camp. But that is the way with guns;
sometimes they rush up to within 500 yards of the
enemy before they shoot, and sometimes they won't
shoot at all.

The afternoon was spent in carrying out our
reconnaissance. A reconnaissance is undertaken
with a view to exposing the enemy's position and
strength. Without intending a real attack, you
demonstrate, feign a forward movement, push on in
one place or another, or threaten to turn his flanks ;
so obliging him to move his men here and there,
expose his strength and the limits of the position,
and, perhaps, the whereabouts and number of his
guns, if they should be tempted to open fire at our
scouts. This is the theory of the thing. In practice
it doesn't quite work, owing to the utter ignorance
of the Boers of all military tactics. On all occasions
when we have carried out these manoeuvres, notably

48 WITH RIMINGTON

round the Magersfontein hills before the battle,
they have not only failed to make the proper re-
sponses to our moves, but have neglected to take
notice of them in any way whatever. Not a gun
speaks, not a man is to be seen. We demonstrate
before empty hills. Creepily, you may conjecture
the fierce eyes along the rock edge, but nothing
shows. In vain we circle about the plain, advance,
retire, curtsey, and set to him ; our enemy, like the
tortoise, " will not join the dance." Nothing is more
discouraging. It is like playing to an empty house.

However, as young B said to me, we did our

part anyway, and if they are so ignorant as not to
know the counter-moves, well, they must take the
consequences. Manoeuvres of this kind, I must tell
you, are a high test of military skill, and are often
not fully intelligible to the lay mind. As an instance
of this, I heard a man of ours, a shrewd fellow but
no soldier, say, in his coarse Colonial way, as we
were riding home, that he **was glad we had

finished making a b y exhibition of ourselves."

It is to be hoped that after a little we shall get to
appreciate these manoeuvres better. Just at first
there is a slight suggestion of Gilbert and Sullivan
about them.

LETTER VIII

SCOUTING ON THE MODDER

Thornhill Ykru, January 30, 190a

On the eastern or Jacobsdal side the country is
all a plain, dull and monotonous like a huge prairie,
with no shade from the heat or shelter from the
thunderstorms. On the western side it is very
different. Great hills run roughly parallel to the
river course, but leave a wide plain between them-
selves and it. They are clothed with a few scant
bushes, out of which their tops rise bare and rocky ;
but in the shady hollows and gorges the low thorn-
trees (mimosas) grow thickly, and over the plain
that stretches to the river their grey foliage gathers
into thick covers or is sometimes dotted here and
there. The smell of the mimosa flowers (little
yellow balls of pollen-covered blossom) is the most
delicious I know, and the air as we ride through
these lonely covers, where a few buck seem the
only tenants, is fragrant with it. Far apart there
are farms, prettily situated, generally close to the
hills, the rocky sides of the kopjes rising behind,
the wide plain spread in front. Each has its dam,
sometimes more than one, built round with mud em-
bankments, with huge weeping willows overhang-
ing, and rows of tall poplars and blue gums (with
shreds of bark rattling), and plenty of other trees.

The farmhouses themselves are uninteresting, but

« D

so WITH RIMINGTON

the gardens, with their great thicket hedges of
prickly pear and quince and brilliant blossoming
pomegranate, are delightful, especially at this time,
when the fruit is just getting ripe.

It was out on this western side, where we were
feeling for the enemy's right flank, some twenty
miles from camp, in a niche half way up the moun-
tain, that we spent our last Christmas. We rather
expected an attack, as a Kaffir of ours had been
taken by them, and might be expected to reveal
our movements. After dark we climbed the hill,
dragging our ponies over the boulders and scratch-
ing our way. through the thorns. . . .

The Boer hill was four or five miles distant,
north across the plain. All along its jpurple sides
we ranged with our glasses, seeing nothing; but
after dark several little points of light showed where
their laager was. We sat all night among the
rocks (I thought of you and the roast-turkey and
holly), occasional heavy drops of rain falling, and
a flicker of lightning now and then. Heavy clouds
rolled up, and the night set in as dark as pitch.
The level plain below us lay flat as a pancake
from their hill to ours. So passed our '99 Christ-
mas, picturesque possibly, but not very comfortable.
Dark hillside ; rain in large warm drops ; night dark,
with a star or two and struggling moon. In front,
a distant hillside, with points of camp-fire twink-
ling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little
party, were carousing and drinking their dop.
Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches
his cramped limbs. Down below under us an
expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching

r"

SCOUTING ON THE MODDER 51

to our feet, which we peer across, but can make
out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's fav-
ourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on
the qui vive when the white line showed along the
east. No doubt, however, they all had such heads
after their Christmas drink that they were in no
humour for such a diversion. At any rate, they
let us alone. Very stiff and weary and wet, we
crept down the hill soon after daybreak and started
on our twenty-mile homeward march. It was
5 P.M. before we reached camp, and we had had
nothing to e?it all day. I don't know if we were
most tired or hungry. Take that three days as
a sample of work. We start at 6 a.m. on Sunday ;
do a full day's riding and scouting, and get three
hours'- sleep that night at Enslin. Then we
saddle up and pass the rest of the night and all
the next day riding, except when we are climbing
hills on foot to look out. The second night we
sit among the hills expecting an attack, and next
day till one o'clock are in the saddle again. A la
guerre comme d la guerre. Three days and two
nights' hard work on three hours' sleep. And all
this time you are drinking champagne (well, most
of it, anyway), and sleeping in soft beds with deli-
cious white sheets, and smoking Egyptian cigarettes,
and wearing clean clothes, with nice stiff collars and
shirt cuffs, and having a bath in the morning, warm,
with sweet-smelling soap (Oh, my God !), and sit-
ting side by side at table, first a man and then
a woman ; the same old arrangement, I suppose,
knives to the right and forks to the left as usual.
Ho ! ho ! There are times I could laugh. No

52 WITH RIMINGTON

doubt we shall all get redigested as soon as we get
back, but meantime, as a set-off to the hardship,
one knows what it is to feel free. We eat what
we can pick up, and we lie down to sleep on the
bare ground. We wash seldom, and our clothes
wear to pieces on our bodies. We find we can
do without many things, and though we sometimes
miss them, there comes a keen sense of pleasure
from being entire master of oneself and all one's
possessions. Your water-bottle hangs on your
shoulder; your haversack, with your blanket, is
strapped to your saddle ; rifle, bandolier, and a pair
of good glasses are your only other possessions.
As you stand at your pony's side ready to mount,
you may be starting for the day or you may be away
a fortnight, but your preparations are the same.

Above all others does this scouting life develop
your faculties, sharpen your senses of hearing and
of seeing, and, in practical ways, of thinking too ; of
noting signs and little portents and drawing con-
clusions from them ; of observing things. You feel
more alive than you ever felt before. Every day
you are more or less dependent on your own
faculties. Not only for food and drink for yourself
and your pony, but for your life itself And your
faculties respond to the call. Your glance, as it
scans the rocks and the plain, is more wary and
more vigilant ; your ears, as you lie in the scrub,
prick themselves at a sound like a Red Indian's,
and the least movement among cattle or game or
Kaffirs, or the least sign that occurs within range
of your glasses, is noticed and questioned in an
instant.

SCOUTING ON THE MODDER 53

This you get in return for all you give up — in
return for the sweet-smelling soap and the footman
who calls you in the morning. Oh, that pale-faced
footman! It is dawn when, relieved on look-out, I
clamber down the rocks to our bivouac. A few
small fires burn, and my pal points to a tin coffee
cup and baked biscuit by one of them. It is the
hour at home for the pale-faced footman. I see
him now, entering the room noiselessly with cautious
tread as if it were a sick-room, softly drawing a cur-
tain to let a little light into the darkened apartment,
and approaching with a cup of tea that the poor
invalid has barely to reach out his hand to. Round
our little camp I look, noting trifles with a keen
enjoyment. Shall I ever submit to that varlet
again ? No, never ! I will leap from my bed and
wrestle with him on the floor. I will anoint him
with my shaving soap and duck him in the bath
he meant for me. Do you know the emanci-
pated feeling yourself? Do you know the sensa-
tion when your glance is like a sword-thrust and
your health like a devil's ; when just to touch things
with your fingers gives a thrill, and to look at and
see common objects, sticks and trees, is like drink-
ing wine ? Don't you ? Oh, be called by twenty
footmen and be hanged to you !

This Christmas patrol of ours was of use in
touching the southernmost and westernmost limits
of the Boer position. It has shown that the en-
veloping movement of which so much has been
said, and which has been pressed now and then
on the east side, has not made much progress on
the west

54 WITH RIMINGTON

The big mountain range, running east and west,
comes to an end some thirty miles west of Moddef
Camp, where it breaks up into a few. detached
masses and peaks. The extreme one of these, a
sugar-loaf conei is called the Pintberg, and on this
lonely eerie a picket of ours is generally placed ;
crouched among the few crags and long grass tufts
that form its point, the horses tethered in the hollow
behind; listening by night and watching by day.
When we come out thus far, we sometimes stay out
a week or more at a time. The enemy's position
is along the hills north of the plain by the river —
chiefly north of it, but in places south.

I am turning over my diary with the idea of
giving you a notion of the sort of life we lead,
but find nothing remarkable.

** Last night, Vice, Dunkley, and I were on look-
out on the kopje. There had been a heavy storm
in the afternoon and another broke as we reached
the hill. We crouched in our cloaks waiting for it
to pass before climbing up, as the ironstone boulders
are supposed to attract the lightning (I have heard
it strike them ; it makes a crack like a pistol-shot,
and Colonials don't like staying on the hill tops during
a storm). We passed all night on our airy perch
among the rocks, half wet and the wind blowing
strong. It was a darkish and cloudy night, rather
cold. Watched the light die out of the stormy sky ;
the lightning flickering away to leeward ; wet gleams
from the plain where the water shone here and
there ; moaning and sighing of wind through rock
and branch. We were relieved by Lancers in the
morning and jogged back to Thornhill, where our »

>.-••> ^

'' -V-

^ *

SCOUTING ON THE MODDER 55

little camp is, and I am writing this in the shade
of a big mimosal close to the garden wall.

** I have seen prints in shop windows of farms
and soldiers, bits of country life and war mixed,
a party of Lancers or Uhlans calling at some old
homestead, watering their horses or bivouacking
in the garden. Often what I see now makes me
think of these subjects. A large camp is hideous
and depressing ; dirty and worn, the ground
trampled deep in dust ; filth and refuse lying about ;
the entrails and skins of animals, flies, beastly
smells, and no excitement or animation. But these
outlying scenes, scouts, pickets, &c., have a peculiar
interest. This garden, for instance, is itself pretty
and wild, with its tangle of figs, its avenue of
quinces (great golden fruit hanging), its aloes all
down the side, with heavy, blue spikes and dead
stems sticking thirty feet in air, branching and
blackened like fire-scorched fir-trees, and its dark
green oranges and other fruit and flower-trees all
mixed in a kind of wilderness; and behind this
the steep kopjes, with black boulders heaped to
the sky, and soft grey mimosas in between. It
is a pretty spot in itself, but what a different,
strange interest is brought in by the two or three
carbines leaning against the wall, the ponies, ready
saddled, tethered at the corner, the hint of camp-
fire smoke climbing up through a clump of trees,
and now and then a khaki-clad figure or two
passing between the trunks or lying under them
asleep." .

Here is another little extract, a bit of a night-
spy by three of us on the west side, where wc

56 WITH RIMINGTON

had heard that the Douglas commando was estab-
lishing a laager near a drift some thirteen miles
below camp; a move forward of their right arm,
if true.

" The night was dark as pitch, and very
windy, just what we wanted. After missing our
way several times, whispering, consulting, and feel-
ing about in the dark, we came on the watde fence
and beehive huts of a Kaffir kraal. Up to this
we crept, and Vice dived into the hole of an
entrance, and after some underground rumblings
emerged with an old nigger as you draw a badger
from his earth. The old man was soon persuaded
by a moderate bribe to be our guide to the spot
we wished to reconnoitre. He told us that parties
of Boers were pretty often round that way, and
that one had passed the previous night at the
kraal. Dunkley agreed to stay with the horses,
and Vice and I went on with the Kaffir. The
country was grassy, with plentiful belts and clumps
of silvery bush. After a while the moon shone
out and the clouds dispersed, which made us feel
disagreeably conspicuous in the white patches be-
tween the bush."

Exmoor, as far as the contour of the ground
is concerned, is a little like the more up-and-down
parts of the veldt, and scouting there would be
very much like scouting here. For instance, sup-
pose your camp was at Minehead, the Boers being
in strength at Winsford, and a report comes in
that they have pushed on a strong picket to
Simonsbath. This rumour it is your business to
test, With two friends on a dark, windy night

r

I

SCOUTING ON THE MQDDER 57

you set out. You leave the roatd and take to
the moor. You ride slowly, listening, watching
intently, keeping off the high ground, and as much
as possible avoiding sky-lines. At some cottage
or moorland farm you leave the horses and creep
forward on foot, working along the hollows and
studying every outline. If they are at Simonsbath,
they will have a lookout on the hill this side. A
British picket would show its helmets at a mile,
but the Boers don't affect sky-lines. They will
be on this side, with the hill for a background,
and very likely right down on the flat ; for though
by day the higher you are the better for seeing,
yet at night, when your only chance is to see
people against the sky, the lower you are the
better. These points and others you discuss in
whispers, crouched in the dark hollows, and then
creep forward again.

** Vice and I crawled to the top of our ridge at
last just as morning was breaking. There were
bushes and rocks to hide among, and the clouds
had all gone, and day broke clear. The deep
river ravine lay right below us, and as the light
penetrated, the first thing we saw was a small
shelter tent with a cart or waggon by the side
of it. We grinned and nudged each other and
wagged our heads at the discovery, but kept them
carefully hidden. Farther west was a detached
kopje, the site of a permanent Boer picket, ac-
cording to the Kaffir; but there was no regular
laager. There were no horses grazing about, no
cattle, no smoke, none of the usual and inevitable
signs. A picket! Yes, Pijshed out from K^Q*

58 WITH RIMINGTON

doosberg, the big hill which rises abruptly from
the plain three or four miles off, but no real
occupation. After studying the country yard by
yard with our glasses, and making a few notes
about the lie of the land and the names and
positions of farms, we creep off and get back to
camp by mid-day."

\ The results of these exciting little prowls, when

1 worth while, are sent In to the General, and from
the mass of evidence thus placed before him he
is supposed to Be able to define the enemy's posi-

/ tion and movements,

I Chester Master and our little body were paid a

pretty compliment by the General the other day ;
for the Major having written to ask if we might join
him, Methuen replied that he was sorry to have to
refuse, but that we were doing invaluable work, and
he really couldn't spare us.

Well, fare you well. We hear of heavy rein-
forcements arriving. They will be very welcome.
Magersfontein, Colenso, Stormberg ; we could do
with a change. But what a revelation, is it not?
Are these the prisoners that we played at dice for ?
One thing in it all pleases me, and that is the
temper and attitude of England. I like the gravity,
the quiet, dogged rolling up of the shirt-sleeves
much better than the blustering, wipe-something-
off-a-slate style which the papers made so familiar
to us at the beginning.

LETTER IX

THE ADVANCE

MoDDER River Camp,
February 13, 190a

We are back in the old camp, but only for a few
hours. This afternoon we march. Yesterday,
crossing the line, we had a glimpse of Rimington
and the rest of the corps. They have come up
with French, and are off eastward on the flank
march. We shall be after them hotfoot before
dark. Things begin to shape themselves. We
are going to bring our right arm round, leaving
Magersfontein untouched, and relieve Kimberley by
a flank march in force. Methuen stays here. Poor
fellow ! I wish him joy of it. Bobs and Kitchener
direct the advance ; French heads it. They say we
shall march 50,000 strong. The line is chbked with
troop trains, batteries, siege guns, naval guns, and
endless truckloads of stores and provisions. At
last ! is every one's feelings. The long waited for
moment has come. You know a hawk's hover?
Body steady, wings beating, and then the rushing
swoop. So with the army. We have hovered
steady here these two months with our wings
stretched. Now we swoop.

Far out on the left flank our little body of fifteen
has been in a great state of suspense for several

weeks. We knew the great tide of advance was

59

6o WITH RIMINGTON

setting up from Orange River to the Modder, and
as no orders came for us, we began to think we
should be out of it. Then one evening, as I was
sitting on some boulders above camp looking out
over the country, I saw Chester Master riding in
from headquarters with a smile on his face, and the
sort of look that a man has who brings good news.
Down I clambered. Yes, it had come. We were
to move that night The advance had begun, and
we were off on an all-night march to catch up
French. What a change came over the men!
Instead of bored, sulky faces, and growlings and
grumblings, all were now keen and alert When
the moon rose we started. Our very ponies seemed
to know they were ** in the movement," and stepped
out cheerily. The night was clear as silver, and
each man's shadow moved by his side, clean cut on
the ground like the shadows thrown by the electric
light outside the Criterion. Song and joke passed
once more, and soon up went the favourite cavalry
march, the most stirring tune of any, *' Coming thro'
the Rye." It was very jolly. Not often has one
ridden on such a quest, on such a night, to such a
tune as that.

So, old Modder, fare you well! Farewell the
huge plain that one grew so fond of, with its blue
and yellow bars of light, morning and evening ; the
shaggy kopjes heaped with black rocks, the secluded,
lonely farms nestling beneath, old Cook's, where the
figs were ripe in the garden, and Mrs. Dugmore,
who gave us fresh bread and butter and stewed
peaches. Not soon shall I forget those morning
patrols. Tlie s^a of veldt, the pure air, the care-

THE ADVANCE 6i

lessness, the comradeship, and the freedom. Old
Gordon has a good verse that I find sometimes
running in my head —

** It was merry in the morning
Among the gleaming grass,
To wander as we've wandered many a mile,
And blow the cool tobacco cloud
And watch the white wreaths pass,
Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while."

And then the secret bivouacs and lurking-places
along the river or in among the deserted hills.
The lookout from the tall pyramid, where I have
kept watch so many hours day and night, in heat of
sun or with stars glittering overhead.

It was from this kopje that we got notice to quit,
by the way. Our notice taking the shape of several
little brown-backed Boers galloping about and spying
at us from a hill one and a half miles to the north.
That night we drew out in the plain after dark and
camped (no fires) among the bushes, and at grey dawn
stole back to have another look. Back dashes one
of our advance scouts to tell us that a big force of
Boers was just rounding the point. Next minute
we were swinging out into the plain, through
the low scrub and thorn bush, and as we did so the
Boers came through the Nek. They must have
known exactly where our usual camp was, and crept
up overnight to cut us off. It wasn't by much that
they missed. Three or four loiterers, as it was,
had a warm minute or two. The first single shots
grew to a sudden fierce crackle, like the crackle of
a dry thorn branch on the fire, as they came through
the bush. But they came on nevertheless, one

62 WITH RIMINGTON

horse hit only, and joined us, and we formed up and
started at a steady gallop for the hills beyond the
plain, six miles off; where there was a quite strong
camp, established a few days before, for which we
have lately been scouting. The Boers chased us
some way, but we had got a long start, as they
came through the rough ground, and they were
never on terms with us. Still it was near enough.
Five minutes earlier and what a slating we should
have got !.,..>... - ...

, . We were told afterwards that the plan on this
sideiwas.to draw the Boers south of the -hills, so as
to give the cavalry, which was to move westward
just north of the range, a chance of cutting them
off. The cavalry, however, didn't turn up. No
one seemed to know what had become of them, and
I daresay they were saying the same of us. The
advice not to let your left hand know what your
right hand is doing is sometimes rather too literally
followed in these manoeuvres, I think. Meantime
the Boers have driven off all old Cook's cattle and
all Mrs". Dugmore's too ; and as we were sent out
with the express object of */ reassuring the farmers,"
the result is riot entirely satisfactory.

No matter ; this was all a side issue ; now for a
larger stage and more important operations. Blow
trumpets and sound drums. Enter Lord Roberts
and the main army.

LETTER X

RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY

KiMBERLEY Club, February i8.

It IS with feelings of the deepest satisfaction that I
look at the address at the head of this notepaper.
I ndeed for the last five minutes I have been staring
at it dreamily without putting pen to paper, re-
peating ** Kimberley Club, Kimberley," to myself,
vaguely thinking of all it portends ; the varied
fortunes of the last three months ; the cheery setting
out ; the first battles, that already seem so long ago *;
the repulse, and long, dreary wait by Modder; the
gradual reconstruction of the whole plan of attack,
and now the final achievement. Christian and I
have been sharing a pint of champagne in the club
bar. It was not till I heard the bottle pop that I
realised, as by a sudden inspiration, that the British
army had really attained its object at last. Very
gravely we gave each other luck, and gravely drank
our wine- Both of us, I am glad to be able to tell
you, rose to the occasion, and as we looked across
the bubbles, no foolish chaff or laughter marred the
moment.

I wrote you my last letter from old Modder just
as we were leaving to catch French. Marching
light and fast, we got up with him on the night of
the 15th at the Klip Drift on the Modder, north-
east of Jacobsdal. From there we were sent back

63

64 WITH RIMINGTON

to guide on Kitchener, which we did, bringing him
to French's camp on the river by 6 a.m. next morn-
ing ( 1 6th). We met on the way our little ambulance
cart bobbing home with the adjutant languidly re-
clining. He had had one of those escapes that
now and then come off. There was a high hill to
the north, and up this the previous morning. R., an
active walker, had climbed to have a view of the
country. He reached the top, which is like a gable,
slanting both sides to a thin edge, and precisely as
he did so, ten or a dozen great hairy Boers reached
it from the other side, and, at ten yards' distance
across the rock edge, their eyes met. Can you
conceive a more disgusting termination to a morn-
ing stroll ? Without a word said, R. took to his
heels and the Boers to their Mausers. Down the
hill went R., bounding like a buck, and all round
him whipped and whined the bullets among the
rocks. Twice he went headlong, twisting his ankle
badly once as the stones turned underfoot ; but he
reached the bottom untouched and the shelter of
the bluff where he had left his pony, jumped on and
dashed out into the plain and under the Boer fire
again, and got clean away without a scratch, him
and his pony. Was ever such luck ?

French started on his final relief march about
an hour later, and we were not able to accompany
him as our horses were absolutely done up. It
was very disappointing at the time to see him
ride off on this last stage with a large party of
our comrades, led by Rimington himself (he was
first into Kimberley, we heard afterwards) at the
head. However, as things turned out, it did not

RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY 65

much matter, for the next day we had an interesting
time, and saw a big job put in train, which is not
finished yet, and which we shall probably see more
of if we start, as they say, to-morrow.

The thing began at grey dawn. Chester Master
and two or three Guides were sent forward to re-
connoitre a kopje where the Boers the day before
had had a gun. We found the gun gone. Some
marks of blood, a half-dug grave, and two dead
horses, showed that the fire of our long naval gun
had been more or less effective. We then rode on,
the column we were guiding getting gradually into
formation, and we were just mounting the next
ridge, when down in the valley beneath we saw a
long line of waggons, stretching away eastward for
miles, dragged by huge bullock teams. They were
making the best of their way forward, each with a
party of mounted men riding at the side, and at the
first glance, so close to our army and camp were
they, I almost fancied it must be a convoy of our
own. However, we realised what was up pretty
quickly. The Boers, hearing of French's flank
march, and fearing they would be cut off if they
remained, were abandoning their position in the
hills about Magersfontein, which they had in-
trenched so strongly, and were quietly and promptly
moving off towards Bloemfontein. The rearguard
of their line was at that moment just opposite
to us.

Chester Master immediately sent back an orderly
as hard as he could go to tell our fellows what was
in front and hurry them up, every moment being
now of the utmost importance if we wanted to

E

66 WITH RIMINGTON

intercept the enemy. The Boers themselves took
their measures instantly and with their usual cool-
ness. A long line of kopjes ran eastward across
the plain, flanking the line of their march, and
directly they saw they were discovered, their
horsemen dashed forward and began to occupy
these, thus guarding the right flank of their re-
treat from our attack. Seeing this, Chester
Master galloped back himself to urge on our
Mounted Infantry, who were now mustering
rapidly to the attack.

From the kopje on the extreme left front, where
we were, we could now see extended at our feet
the whole plan of the approaching battle, while
as yet the two sides were invisible to each other.
In the valley on the north side of the kopjes the
Boers were urging on their convoy and rapidly
despatching their sharpshooters to hold the hills
along their right. On the south side were the
masses of our columns, with the squadrons of
Mounted Infantry now detaching themselves from
the main body, and beginning to stream across the
level plain towards the same hills ; all with heads
bent one way, horses prancing and pulling, and
with all the signs of eager excitement, as though
they divined, though as yet they could not see, the
presence of the enemy. Over the dusty plain they
canter, but they are too late by a few minutes.
The Boers are there already, and as the Mounted
Infantry come along, passing close beneath us, an
outbreak of rifle-fire occurs, and the dry plain,
which is of perfectly bare earth, is dotted with
little white puffs of dust as the bullets strike along

RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY 67

it. The fire is a bit short, but schooled by this
time in ** kopje tactics," and realising what is
coming, our squadrons very prudently pull up
and wait for the guns. They haven't long to
wait. I always love to see the guns come up.
Over stones and rocks and bushes, six strong
horses at the gallop, the drivers lashing the
off horses, the guns jumping and rumbling and
swinging ; then the yell, */ Action front," and
round come the teams with a splendid sweep;
next instant they are cast off and jingle to the
rear, and the little venomous guns are left
crouching like toads, looking towards the enemy;
the gunners are upon them before they are
at a standstill (everything happens simulta-
neously) ; there is an instant's pause while the
barrel rises, and then comes the naked spurt of
fire, no smoke, and the officer steps clear of the
dust and glues his glasses to his eyes as the
shell screams on its way. Within ten minutes of
our first viewing the enemy, half a battery had
got into action near our kopje, and was bombard-
ing the first hill along the enemy's flank.

Two or three of the Boer waggons, the last
of the line, had been abandoned when their re-
treat was first discovered. These we took pos-
session of, and with them two Dutchmen and some
coloured boys, one of whom had been driver to
a field-cornet of Cronj^'s. From him we learnt
that Cronj6 had definitely abandoned the whole
Magersfontein position, that this was the tail of
his force going through, and that consequently
there was nothing to be feared from a rear attack.

68 WITH RIMINGTON

Chester Master wrote a hasty despatch to this
effect to Kitchener and gave it to me, after which
I had a most amusing ride through our lines
from the extreme left to the extreme right, where
Kitchener was. First by our batteries, thundering
and smoking (the enemy only had one gun in action
that I saw, but I must say it did very well, feeling
for the range with two short shots, and after that
getting well into our guns every time), and then on
through the Mounted Infantry, who kept on charg-
ing and retiring, until finally after three miles* ride I
came to the far right, where Kitchener and the big
naval gun sat together in state on the top of a small
kopje strewn with black shining rocks. Here I
gave in my despatch, **From Captain Chester Master,
left front, sir," and the best military salute I have
yet mastered (inclined to go into fits of laughter at
the absurdity of the whole thing all the time), and
the great man, with his sullen eye, sitting among
his black rocks all alone, reads it and asks me a
question or two, and vouchsafes to tell me that the
information is "very important," which I suppose
meant that he had not been certain whether he was
in contact with the middle or extreme tail of the
enemy's force. Various officers of the staff come
up and I tell them all I know. I am very hungry
and parched with thirst, but I know I shall get
nothing out of these fellows. However, my luck
holds. Under some thorn-trees below I spy the
flat hats of the sailors, and under the lee of an
ammunition waggon hard by a group of officers.
All is well. Five minutes later I am pledging them
in a whisky and sparklet, and sitting down to such

RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY 69

a breakfast as I have not tasted for weeks. God
bless all sailors, say I !

Orders meantime come thick and fast from the
grim watcher on the rocks above, and troop after
troop of Mounted Infantry go scouring away to the
attack. It is a running fight Kopje after kopje,
as the Boers push on, breaks into fire and is left
extinct behind. But still they keep their flank un-
broken and their convoy intact For the hundredth
time I admire their dogged courage under these,
the most trying of all circumstances, the protection
of a slow retreat.

So it goes on through the day, and I have great
fun galloping about on my own account, looking
into things here and there, and watching the generaJ
progress of events. I meet Chester Master again
about 5 P.M., and he asks me to ride forthwith to
Kimberley with him if Flops can stand it All the
Boer force has cleared from Magersfontein (our in-
formation was all right) and is in retreat on Bloem-
fontein, and Kitchener is sending word by Chester
Master to French, bidding him right turn and march
to head off the Boer retreat, while he (Kitchener)
hangs on their tail.

An hour later we start; four of us. Chester
Master, myself. May, and a black boy. It is a
twenty-three mile ride. A full moon is in the sky
but clouds obscure it, which is a good thing, as the
country is being traversed by stragglers of theirs,
leaving the hills and in retreat eastward. We hear
of several such fugitive bodies from our pickets
for the first few miles. Then we are in absolute
solitude. The plain lies bare and blanched around

70 WITH RIMINGTON

US. A thorn bush or two sticks up on it, or, now
and then, the ghastly shape of a dead horse lying
in puffed up relief with legs sticking out stiff and
straight and an awful stench blowing from it.
Kimberley's search-light at stated intervals still
swings its spoke over our head.

Six or seven miles out from Kimberley my pony
gives out, and Chester Master and May on fresh
horses ride on, leaving me the boy. We plod on,
an interesting, delicious ride. I get off and walk.
A little wind rustles over the dry earth and bushes,
but otherwise there is not a whisper of sound. The
landscape at one moment lies white before us as if
it had been washed in milk, and the next is blotted
out with clouds. Now and again we pause to listen,
and the boy stands like a bronze image of Attention
with bent head and held breath, the whites only of
his eyes moving as he rolls them from one object to
another. At last from a low kopje top by the path
comes the first loud and welcome " Halt ! Who
goes there ? " of an English picket. Another two
or three miles brings me to an outpost of the town,
and there, dead tired and Flops the same, I fling
myself on the ground, after hearty greetings and a
word or two of talk with the guard, and do a three
hours' sleep till the dawn of the 1 7th.

In a grey light I rouse myself to look out across
the wet misty flat, hearing some one say, *' Who's
that? What force is that?" followed immediately
by **Call out the guard ; stand to your arms, men."
But then, as light increases, we see by the regular
files and intervals that the force is British, and I
know that Chester Master has got in all right and

RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY 71

delivered his message, and French already, at a
few hours' notice, is casting back with that terrible
cavalry of his after Cronj6 and the retreating Boers.
Kimberley does not in the least give one the
idea of a beleaguered and relieved town. There
are a few marks of shells, but so few and far
between as not to attract attention, and you might
walk all about the town without being struck by
anything out of the common. I have sampled the
roast-horse and roast-mule which the garrison
seems to have been chiefly living on for the past
five or six weeks, and find both pretty good, quite
equal, if not superior, to the old trek-ox. Some
people tell us pathetic stories of the hardships to
women and young children and babies, owing to
the difficulty of getting proper food, especially milk.
On the other hand, many seem to have actually
enjoyed the siege, and two or three young ladies
have assured me that they found it infinitely divert-
ing and enjoyed an excellent time, making up
afternoon tea-parties among their friends. The
relief was not the occasion of any excitement or
rejoicing whatever. People walked about the
streets and went about their business and served
in their shops without showing in their appearance
or manner any trace of having passed through a
bad time or having been just delivered from it.
They seemed, on the whole, glad to see us, but
there was no enthusiasm. This was partly due,
I think, to the absence of drink. The Colonial's
idea of gratitude and good-fellowship is always
expressed in drink, and cannot be separated from it,
or even exist without it. Many felt this. Several

72 WITH RIMINGTON

said to me, ** We are awfully glad to see you, old
chap, but the fact is there's no whisky." On the
whole, except the last week, during which the Boers
had a hundred-pounder gun turned on, one doesn't
gather that the siege of Kimberley was noteworthy,
as sieges go^ either for the fighting done or the
hardships endured. But that is not to reflect on
the defenders, who showed a most plucky spirit all
through, and would have resisted a much severer
strain if it had been brought to bear upon them.

LETTER XI

PAARDEBERG— THE BOMBARDMENT

February 24, 1900.

We are once more upon the M odder. I should
think the amount of blood, Dutch and English, this
river has drunk in the last few months will give it
a bad name for ever. There is something deadly
about that word Modder. Say it over to yourself.
Pah ! It leaves a taste of blood in the mouth.

We have been fighting in a desultory kind of
way for the last week here. Coming from Kim-
berley, where we had gone to holloa back French
(you could follow him by scent all the way from
the dead horses), we made a forced march and re-
joined him here by the river, where he is busily
engaged, with Kitchener at the other end, in bom-
barding old Cronj6 in the middle. They have
fairly got the old man. Kitchener had stuck to
him pretty tight, it seems, after we left them that
evening at Klip Drift. French has nicked in
ahead. Macdonald has arrived, I believe, or is
arriving, and there are various other brigades and
divisions casting up from different quarters, all con-
centrating on unhappy Cronj^. Lord Roberts, I
suppose, will get the credit, but part of it, one
would think, belongs to Kitchener, who planned
the movement and put it in train before Lord

Roberts arrived.

73

74 WITH RIMINGTON

Cronj^, by all accounts, has about 4000 men
with him. He has dug himself into the river
banks, which are steep and afford good cover. You
would never guess, sweeping the scene with your
glasses, that an army could be hiding there. The
river curves and winds, its course marked by the
tops of the willows that grow along its banks. The
land on both sides stretches bare and almost level,
but there are a few rises and knolls from which
our artillery smashes down its fire on the Boer
laager. At one point you can make out a ragged
congregation of waggons, broken and shattered,
some of them burning or smouldering. That is
where the laager is, but not a soul can one see
move. The place looks an utter solitude, bare
and lifeless in the glare of the sun. There is no
reply to our busy guns. The little shrapnel clouds,
stabbed with fire, burst now here now there, some-
times three or four together, over the spot, and
the blue haze floats away, mingling with the
darker, thicker vapour from the less frequent
lyddite. ** What are they shooting at ? " a stranger
would say ; ** there is nobody there." Isn't there ?
Only 4000 crafty, vigilant Boers, crowding in their
holes and cuddling their Mausers. Ask the High-
landers.

You will have heard all about that by this time.
The desperate attempt last Sunday to take the
position by storm. It was another of those fiendish
** frontal attacks." Have we been through Bel-
mont and Graspan and M odder River and Magers-
fontein for nothing? Or must we teach every
general in turn who comes to take charge of us

PAAKDEBERG 75

what the army has learnt long ago, that a frontal
attack against Mausers is leading up to your
enemy's strong suit. For Methuen there were
reasons. Methuen could not outflank, could not
go round, was not strong enough to leave his lines
of communication, and had practically no cavalry.
He had to go straight on. Belmont, Graspan, and
Modder were turnpike gates. The toll was heavy,
but there was no choice but to pay. But what
was the reason of this latest ? We had them here
safely bottled up. We have them still. It is only
a question of days. The attack could have gained
nothing by success ; has lost little by its failure.
The casualties were 1 500. I know all about eggs
and omelettes, but these were simply thrown in
the gutter.

Never tell me these Boers aren't brave. What
manner of life, think you, is in yonder ditch ? Our
artillery rains down its cross fire of shells perpetually.
The great ox-waggons are almost totally destroyed
or burnt. The ammunition in the carts keeps
blowing up as the fire reaches it. The beasts,
horses and oxen, are strewn about, dead and putrid,
and deserters say that the stench from their rotting
carcasses is unbearable. Night and day they
have to be prepared for infantry attacks, and
yet, to the amazement of all of us, they still hold
out.

Old Cronj^'s apparent object is to try and save
Bloemfontein by delaying us till reinforcements
come up from the south and east. This is really
what we want, because the more of the enemy we
get in front of this great army of ours, the harder

76 WITH RIMINGTON

we shall be able to hit them. But evidently Cronj6
is ignorant of our strength.

Meantime we can make out in our break-of-day
scoutings up the river that bodies of men are
approaching from the east. They have made a
laager about ten miles up, and evidently mean to
dispute our passage to the capital. The longer old
Cronj^ holds out, the more men from Colesberg
and Natal will come up, the more entrenchments
will be cut, and the harder will be our way to
Bloemfontein. 'Tis the only way he sees to save
the town, for we should march straight in else.
Perhaps, too, he cherishes some hope of being
relieved himself; of a determined attack from with-
out, which might enable him, by a sudden sally, to
break through; though, for dismounted men (and
their horses are all dead by this time), the chances
of ultimate escape in a country like this must be
very small, one would think. Anyhow, he sticks to
his work like a glutton. The shells burst over
them. The lyddite blows them up in smoke and
dust, the sun grills, the dead bodies reek, our
infantry creep on them day and night ; foul food,
putrid water, death above and around, they grin
and bear it day after day to gain the precious hours.
And all the time we on our side know perfectly
well that no relief they could possibly bring up
would serve our army for rations for a day.

LETTER XII

PAARDEBERG— THE SURRENDER

March 5, 1900.

Well, that is over, and I hope you are satisfied.
We have got Cronj^. His victories are o'er. We
have also got Mrs. Cronj6, which was a bit more
than we bargained for. They cut her an extra
deep hole, I hear, to be out of shell-fire, and she sat
at the bottom all day long, receiving occasional
visits from Cronj4 and having her meals handed
down to her. One can fancy her blinking up at
her ** Man," whom she always, I am told, accom-
panies on his campaigns, and shaking her head
sorrowfully over the situation. There is nothing
very spirit-stirring about a mud hole and an old
woman sitting at the bottom of it, but the danger
and the terrible hardships were real enough. That
is always the way with these Dutch. They have
all the harsh realities and none of the glamour and
romance. Athens, with their history and record,
would have made the whole world ring for ever.
But they are dumb. It seems such a waste.

Albrecht too is among the prisoners, the famous
German "expert," who designs their works for
them and manages their artillery ; and we have
taken 4000 prisoners, and several guns and one
detested "pompon." Come, now, here is a little

bit of all right at last.

77

78 WITH EIMINGTON

I was one of a party that rode down with the
Major on the morning of the surrender to the
laager and saw the prisoners marched in. They
seemed quite cheery and pleased with themselves.
They were dressed in all sorts of ragged, motley-
looking clothes ; trousers of cheap tweed, such as
you see hung up in an East End slop-shop ; jackets
once black, now rusted, torn and stained, and
battered hats. They reminded me more of a mob
of Kent hop-pickers than anything else, and it was
a matter of some surprise, not to say disgust, to
some of us to think that such a sorry crowd should
be able to withstand disciplined troops in the way
they did.

I talked to several of them. They all agreed in
saying that they had been through the most ghastly
time in the last ten days and were heartily glad it
was over. They exchanged nods and good-days
with us and the soldiers who were standing about,
and altogether seemed in a very friendly and
conciliatory mood. All this, however, it struck me,
was rather put on, a bit of acting which was now
and then a trifle overdone. Boers are past-masters
at hiding their real feelings and affecting any that
they think will be acceptable. It is a trait which
has become a national characteristic, and the craft,
dissimulation, the slimness, as it is called, of the
Boers is a by-word. I suppose it comes from the
political situation, the close neighbourhood of a
rival race, stronger and more energetic, which
fosters in the stolid Dutchman, by way of buckler,
this instinctive reticence and cunning. His one
idea is to make what he can out of the situation

PAARDEBERG 79

without troubling his head for a moment about his
own candour and sincerity. It is Oriental, the trait
you expect to find in a John Chinaman, but which
surprises you in a burly old Dutchman. Still there
it is. At any farm you go to, men, women, and
children will put on a semblance of friendship, and
set to work to lie with a calmness which is really
almost dignified. No one in this country ever
believes a thing a bit the more because a Dutchman
says it.

We went on into the captured laager. It was
an extraordinary, interesting, and loathsome sight.
Dead bodies of horses and men lay in all directions
in various stages of decomposition, and the reeking
smell was something quite indescribable. I fancied,
even after leaving the place, that I carried the smell
about with me, and that it had got into my clothes.
The steep river banks were honeycombed with
little holes and tunnels, and deep, narrow pits, like
graves ; narrow at the top, and hollowed out below
to allow less entrance for shells. Evidently each
man had cut his own little den. Some were done
carelessly, mere pits scooped out. Others were
deep, with blankets or old shawls spread at the
bottom, and poles with screens of branches laid
across the top to keep off the sun. I saw one or two
which were quite works of art ; very narrow tunnels
cut into the side of the river-cliflf, and turning round
after you entered, making a quite secure retreat,
unless perhaps an extra heavy old lyditte might
happen to burst the whole bank up. This actually
happened, they told us, with the very last shot fired
the night before ; a bit of the bank having been

8o WITH RIMINGTON

blown Up with eight men in it, of whom five were
killed and three wounded. The whole river
channel looks as if a big colony of otters or
beavers had settled here, honeycombing the bank
with their burrows, and padding the earth bare
and hard with their feet. It was all worn like
a highroad. On the other side, the waggons
were a sight ; shattered, and torn, and wrecked
with shot ; many of them burnt ; several, huge as
they are, flung upside down by the force of a shell
bursting beneath them. All their contents were
littered and strewn about in every direction;
blankets, clothes, carpenters' and blacksmiths' tools,
cooking utensils, furniture. You would have
thought the Boers were settlers moving to a new
country with all their effects, instead of an army on
the march. This is how they do things, however,
in the homely, ponderous fashion. They often take
their women and children with them., There were
many in the crowd we captured.

I wandered about alone a long time, looking at
the dismal, curious scene where so much had been
endured. White flags, tied to poles or stripped
branches, fluttered from waggon tops. Our
ambulance carts came along, and the Tommies,
stripping to the waist, proceeded to carry, one by
one, the Dutch wounded through the ford on
stretchers.

We are bivouacked ourselves far up the river,
in a secluded nook among mimosas and kopjes
with the thick current of the lately unknown, ^^but
now too celebrated, Modder rolling in front of us.
The weather has changed of late. It is now

PAAKDEBERG 8i

autumn. We have occasional heavy rains, and you
wake up at night sometimes to find yourself adrift
in a pool of water. It gets chilly too.

The enemy are all about the place, and we
interview them every morning at daybreak, some-
times exchanging shots, sometimes not. We lay
little traps for each other, and vary our manoeuvres
with intent to deceive. This advance guard busi-
ness (we are dealing here with the relief parties of
Boers that have come up between us and Bloem-
fontein) always reminds me of two boxers sparring
for an opening. A feint, a tap, a leap back, both
sides desperately on the alert and wary.

We lost poor Christian yesterday in one of these
little encounters. He was mortally wounded in
stopping at short range to pick up a friend whose
horse had been shot. I have mentioned him, I
think, to you in my letters. There was no one
in the corps more popular. "Tell the old dad I
died game," was what he said when the Major,
coming up with supports, knelt down to speak
to him.

Nothing very noteworthy has occurred since
the surrender. The army has been quietly resting,
taking stock of the prisoners, and sending them
to the railway, and we are expecting every day
now the order to advance. The enemy, meanwhile,
have been collecting in some force, and are evi-
dently prepared to dispute our march east. Yester-
day we had a duel with a gun which they have
managed, goodness knows how, to drag up to the
top of a commanding hill some miles up the river.
However, it was too strongly placed. We lost

82 WITH RIMINGTON

several men. The enemy's fire was very accurate,
and they ended up by sending three shots deliber-
ately one after the other right into our ambulance
waggons.

We shall be able to post letters to-day, and
the reason this one is so extremely dirty is that
I am finishing it in a drizzling rain, being on picket
guard a couple of miles up the river, not far from
the scene of yesterday's shooting. The Boers are
on the bustle this morning. One can see them
cantering about on the plain just across the river,
where thousands of their cattle are grazing. In front
the big-gun hill glimmers blue in the mist. Two or
three of the enemy have crept up the woody river-
course and tried a shot at us ; some close ; the
bullets making a low, quick whistle as they flit
overhead. My two companions — there are three
of us — ^are still blazing an indignant reply at the
distant bushes. By the amount of fire tap, tap,
tapping like an old woodpecker all round the
horizon, it seems that there is a sudden wish for a
closer acquaintanceship among the pickets generally
this morning. Those fellows in the river are at
it again!

LETTER XIII

POPLAR GROVE

March 8, 1900.

We left our camp on M odder River at midnight
of the I6th. The night was clear and starlit, but
without moon. Moving down the river to take
up our position in the flank march, we passed
battalion after battalion of infantry moving steadily
up to carry the position in front. The plan is this.
The infantry advance up the river as if to deliver
a frontal attack ; but meanwhile the mounted troops,
which have started during the night, are to make
a wide detour to the right and get round at the back
of the Boer position, so as to hem them in. The
idea sounds a very good one, but our plans were
upset by the Boers not waiting to be hemmed in.
However, it is certain that if they had waited we
should have hemmed them in. You must re-
member that.

The guns go rumbling past in the darkness.
We are on the right of the column. Along our
left we can just distinguish a long, black river
of figures moving solidly on. It flows without
break or gap. Now and then a jar or clank, the
snort of a horse, the rattle of chains, rises above
the murmur, but underneath all sounds the deep-
toned rumbling of the wheels as the English guns
go by.

Close in front of us is a squadron of Lancers,

83

84 WITH RIMINGTON

their long lances, slender, and black, looking like
a fringe of reeds against the fast paling sky, and
behind us there is cavalry without end. The
morning is beautifully clear with a lovely sunrise,
and that early hour, with horses fresh, prancing
along with a great force of mounted men, always
seems to me one 'of the best parts of the whole
show.

As soon as we can see distinctly we make out that
we have got to the south of the enemy's hills, and
are marching along their flanks. They look like a
group of solid indigo pyramids against the sunrise.
Are those kopjes out of range ? is a question that
suggests itself as we draw alongside, leaving them
wide on our port beam. Yes, no! No! a lock of
smoke, white as snow, lies suddenly on the dark hill-
side, followed by fifteen seconds of dead silence.
Then comes the hollow boom of the report, and
immediately afterwards the first whimper, passing
rapidly into an angry roar of the approaching shell,

which bursts close alongside the Lancers. *' D d

good shot," grunts the next man to me, with sleepy
approval, as indeed it is.

The order to extend is given, but before the
Lpancers can carry it out the smoke curl shows again,
and this time the shell comes with a yell of triumph
slosh into the thickest group of them, and explodes
on the ground. There is a flutter of lances for
an instant round the spot, and the head and mane
of a shot horse seen through the smoke as it rears
up, but the column moves steadily on, taking no
notice, only now it inclines a little to the right to
get away from that long-range gun.

POPLAR GROVE 85

We march on eastward as day broadens, through
a country open and grassy, rising and falling in
long slopes to the horizon. Suddenly from the far
side of one of these ridges comes the rapid, dull,
double-knocking of the Mausers. The enemy
are firing at our flankers ; these draw back under
cover of the slope, and we continue to advance, the
firing going on all the time, but passing over our
heads. Now the Major, curious as to the enemy's
position, sends half-a-dozen of our troop up the
slope to get a view. These ride up in open order,
and are at once made a mark of by the Boer
riflemen, luckily at long range. Wing, wing, with
their sharp whirring note, came the bullets. They
take a rapid survey and return to tell the Major
that the scenery in that direction is exceptionally
uninteresting, a long slant of grass stretching up for
a mile or more, and somewhere about the skyline
Boers shooting. Then comes the usual interval
while we wait for "the guns." The guns shortly
arrive and a brace of Maxims. These open a hot
fire at the top of the hill. They are rather in front
of us, and fire back up the slope across our front ;
the bullets passing sound like the rushing of wind
through grass.

After a bit the order is given to take the hill,
and we advance firing as we go. Beyond the guns
and Maxims other men are moving up. You notice
that the Colonials shoot as sportsmen do. The
regulars blaze away all the time, seeing nothing, but
shooting on spec at the hill top ; load and shoot,
load and shoot, as hard as they can. Our fellows
have a liking for something to shoot at. With their

86 WITH RIMINGTON

carbines at the ready, they walk quickly forward as
if they were walking up to partridges. Now a man
sees a head lifted or the grass wave, and instantly
up goes the carbine with a crack as it strikes the
shoulder. Another jumps up on to an anthill to get
a better view. Every time an extra well directed
shell falls among the prostrate Boers, one or two
start up and run back, and noticing this, several of
the Guides wait on the guns, and as each shell
screams overhead on its way to the hill top, they
stand ready for a snapshot. Wang! goes the shell,
up leaps a panic-stricken Dutchman, and crack,
crack, crack, go half-a-dozen carbines. Though
absolutely without cover, the enemy keep up for
some time a stubborn reply, and when at last we
reach the crest, tenanted now only by a few dead
bodies, we have lost nearly two precious hours.
Below across the vast plain the Dutch are in full
retreat. It is doubtful already if we shall be able
to intercept them.

The doubt is soon decided against us. We
are crossing the flat, kopjes in front and a slope
on the right. Suddenly several guns open from
the kopjes ahead, the shells dropping well among
us. At this coarse behaviour we pause disgusted.
An A.D.C. galops up. We are to make a recon-
naissance (hateful word !) on the right to see if the
slope is occupied. " Will the Guides kindly . . . ."^ "
and the officer waves his hand airily towards the
hill and bows. We are quite well aware that the
slope is occupied, for we have seen Boers take up
their position there, and several experimental shots
have already been fired by them. However, "any-

>w<^

POPLAR GROVE 87

thing to oblige" is the only possible answer, and
the squadron right wheels and breaks into a canter.
Once on the rise the bullets come whizzing through
our ranks quick enough. Down goes one man, then
another, then another. Maydon of the Times^ who
is with us, drops, but only stunned by a grazing
bullet, as it turns out. The Life Guards deploying
on our left catch it hot, and many saddles are
emptied.

A charge at this time would have scattered the
Boers instantly (they were very weak) and saved
both time and lives. Instead of this, however, it is
thought more advisable to keep every one standing
still in order to afford a more satisfactory test of
Boer marksmanship. It is very irksome. The air
seems full of the little shrill-voiced messengers.
Our ponies wince and shiver ; they know perfectly
well what the sound means. At last the fact that
the hills are held is revealed to the sagacity of our
commanders, and we are moved aside and the
guns once more come into action.

It is easy (thank goodness !) to be wise after the
event. I find every one very discontented over
this action, and especially the cavalry part of it
Had we made a good wide cast instead of a timid
little half-cock movement, and come round sharp,
we should have intercepted the Boer convoy. As
it is, we lose two more hours at this last stand
which brings us till late in the afternoon, and soon
afterwards, on approaching the river, we see five
miles off the whole Dutch column deliberately
marching away eastward. Our failure stares us in
the face, and we see with disgust that we have been

88 WITH RIMINGTON

bluflfed and fooled and held in check all day by some
sixty or eighty riflemen, while the main body,
waggons, guns, and all, are marching away across
our front. *'The day's proceedings," says one of
our officers to me with laughable deliberation,
"afford a very exact representation of the worst
possible way of carrying out the design in hand."

LETTER XIV

BLOEMFONTEIN

My last letter was written after Poplar Grove, and
we marched in here six days later on the 13th. Of
the fighting on the way I can give you no account,
as I was knocked up with a bad chill and had to go
with the ambulance. Unluckily we had two nights
of pouring rain, and as I had left behind my blanket
and had only my Boer mackintosh (with the red
lining), I fared very badly and got drenched both
nights and very cold. This brought on something
which the doctor described as "not real dysentery."
However, whatever it was (or wasn't), it made me
as weak as a baby, and I was transferred to our
ambulance, in which I lay, comfortable enough, but
only vaguely conscious of my surroundings.

The next day, the loth, they fought the battle
of Spytfontein. All I remember of it was some
shells of the Boers falling into the long river of
convoy which stretched in front of me in an endless
line, and the huge bullock and mule waggons
wheeling left and . right and coming back across
the veldt, with long bamboo whips swaying and
niggers uttering diabolical screams and yells. We
lost a good many men, but did fairly well in the
end, as our infantry got into the enemy among
some hills, where there were not supposed to be

any enemy at all, and cut them up a good deal.

89

90 WITH RIMINGTON

The following day I made the march on a
bullock-waggon, which is really a very fine and
imposing way of getting along. Your team of
twenty strong oxen, in a long two-by-two file, have
a most grand appearance, their great backs straining
and the chain between taut as a bar, and the view
you get over the field from your lofty perch among
the piled-up kits and sacks is most commanding.
There used to be an old print at home of Darius
at the head of the Persian host " overlooking all the
war" from the summit of some stately chariot or
other, which much reminded me of my present
position. I managed to mount my pony to ride
into Bloemfontein, which we did on the 13th, and
am now quite well.

This morning I sent you a wire to tell you that
I had got my commission, ' thinking thereby to
impress you with the importance of the event. The
past five months of trooper life have not passed
unpleasantly. There have been the inconveniences
and hardships of the moment, "les petites mis^res
de la vie militaire," which sound trifling enough,
but are rather a tax on one's endurance sometimes.
The life of a trooper, and especially of a scout, is
often a sort of struggle for existence in small ways.
You have to care for and tend your pony, supple-
ment his meagre ration by a few mealies or a
bundle of forage, bought or begged from some farm
and carried miles into camp; watch his going out and
coming in Jrom grazing ; clean him when you can,
and have an eye always to his interests. Your life
and work depend so entirely on your pony that this
soon becomes an instinct with you. Then there are

BLOEMFONTEIN 91

your own wants to be supplied. . You will be half
starved often if you can't raise something to put in
your pocket — eggs from a Kaffir, or a fowl, or a
loaf of bread. Then there is the cooking question.
Wood is scarce; unless you or your pal have an
eye to this, you may go supperless for want of a
fire. Another scarcity is water. Very likely there
will be none nearer than a mile from camp, and this
means a weary tramp after a long day. Then what
about your bedding ? You can carry only a blanket
or greatcoat on your horse, so that, when you are
away from your convoy, which is often enough, you
have not much covering, and if it comes on to rain
you have a poor time of it Of clothes, too, you
have only what you ride in. If wet, they dry on
you ; and few and far between are your chances of
washing them. All these things sound and are trifles.
A man would think little of them in a sporting
expedition in the Himalayas ; but after a long
time the monotony tells. The heat tells. You are
sometimes "a bit slack," and at those times the
cooking of your wretched morsel of flesh, or the
struggle for a drop of pea-soup coloured water
becomes irksome.

The little star on your shoulder saves you from
all that. You can tell the new commissioned man
by the way he has of constantly looking over his
shoulder. Poor fellow ! he likes to catch the pretty
glitter — the "twinkle, twinkle, little star" — that lifts
privates' hands to him as they pass. Some one else
cooks for him now, and there is the officers' mess
cart with a few welcome extras and a merry gather-
ing at meals and a batman to tend the pony (though

92 WITH RIMINGTON

you keep an eye on that yourself too), and extra
clothes and blankets, and a shelter of some sort to
sleep under, and a Kaffir boy to put out his washing
things when he comes in hot and tired, and alto-
gether life seems, by comparison, a very luxurious
and pleasant affair. I am a bit of a democrat, as
you know, and all for equality and the rights of man ;
but now I say, like Mesty, when they made him a
butler, ** Dam equality now I major-domo."

Bloemfontein is a pretty little place, but it
takes you by surprise. The country round is, for
endless leagues, so barren, a mere grassy, undulating
expanse of prairie land, with a few farms at ten-mile
intervals, that the appearance of a town seems in-
congruous. All of a sudden you come to a crowd
of low bungalow-like roofs under the shadow of
some flat-topped kopjes and realise the presence in
this void of the Free State capital.

The place is suggestive, in its low single storey
houses and pretty gardens, of quiet ease, and has a
certain kindliness about it. It is pleasant to see
the creeper grown fronts and flower patches, and
few shady trees after our long sojourn in the veldt.
But the one memorable sight of the place, the scene
of a special and unique interest, is the Bloemfontein
Club. This is the first time that the great army
under Lord Roberts has found itself in occupation
of any town, and the first time, therefore, that all its
various contingents have had a chance of meeting
together in one place. At the Bloemfontein Club
the chance has occurred, and certainly never before,
in any time or place, could you have seen such
representative gatherings of the British race from

BLOEMFONTEIN 93

all parts of the world as you will see if you stroll
any day into the verandah and smoking-room and
bar of the Bloemfontein Club. From the old country
and from every British colony all over the world
these men of one race, in a common crisis, here for
one moment meet, look into each others' faces, drink,
and greet and pass on ; to be drawn back each to
his own quarter of the globe and separated when
the crisis is passed and not to meet again. But
what a moment and what a meeting it is, and what
a distinction for this little place. Organise your
mass meetings and pack your town-halls, you never
will get together such a sample of the British
Empire as you will see any afternoon in this remote
pothouse. What would you give for a peep at the
show ; to see the types and hear the talk ? You
would give a hundred pounds, I daresay. I wish I
could take you one of these afternoons : I would do
it for half the money.

You can see the great mountain of Thaba Nchu
quite clearly from here, though it is forty miles away,
and trace every ravine and valley in its steep sides,
defined in pure blue shadows. We have been out
there these last ten days on what is known as a
*' bill-sticking " expedition ; distributing, that is, a
long proclamation which Lord Roberts has just
issued, in which he explains to the Free State
Burghers that all their property will be respected, .
and they will be allowed themselves to return to
their farms forthwith if they will just take a little
quiet oath of allegiance to the British Crown. A
few have done so and received passes, but the
interest taken in the scheme seems less on the

94 WITH RIMINGTON

whole than one would have supposed likely. Some
explain it by saying that the Boers are such liars
themselves that they can't believe but what the
English are lying too ; while others think the move
is premature, and that the Free State is not pre-
pared yet to abandon the war or her allies.

We were by way also of endeavouring to cut off
any stray parties of Boers who might be making
their way north from Colesberg and that neighbour-
hood. Broadwood was in command of us. There
was a stray party, sure enough, but it was 7000
strong. It passed across our bows, fifteen miles
east of us, and we let it severely alone.

Meantime there is a general lull. In the midst
of war we are in peace. I am going off to-morrow
to our old original Modder River camp (having
ridden in from Thaba Nchu yesterday), that cockpit
where so much fighting was done and where we
spent so many weary weeks watching the heights of
Magersfontein, to get luggage and things left be-
hind. It will be strange to see the old place deserted
and to ride near the hills without being shot at.
Buller is peacefully sleeping at or near Ladysmith ;
the sound of his snoring faintly reaches us along the
wires. Gatacre slumbers at Colesberg. Kitchener
has disappeared, no one knows exactly where ; and
Little Bobs has curled himself up at Government
House here, and given orders that he is not to be
called for a fortnight. What news can you expect
in such times ? There is positively none.

Bloemfontein gives one the curious impression
just now of a town that has been unpacked and
emptied of all its contents, and had them dumped

7^

BLOEMFONTEIN 95

down on the land alongside. The shops contain
little or nothing. They have been bought up and
have not had time to restock. But outside the
town, on the veldt, a huge depot of all sorts of goods
is growing larger and larger every day, as the trains,
one after another, come steaming north with their
loads of supplies. There is a street, ankle deep in
mud, of huge marquees, each with a notice of its
contents outside : " Accoutrements," " Harness,"
"Clothing," *' Transit Store," and what not. Behind
and between are vast piles of boxes, bales, bags, and
casks heaped up, and more arrive every hour on
loaded trucks along a branch rail from the station.
It is a busy, animated scene. Orderlies run or
gallop about; quartermasters and adjutants and
others hurry here and there, with their hands full
of papers from one marquee to another, collecting
their orders ; shopping as it were, but shopping on
rather a large scale ; and the big ox-waggons come
creaking along and churning up the mud. This is
where the cost of a war comes in. These are a few
of the little things that our army will require on its
way to Pretoria. There will be money to pay for
this. We shall feel this some day, you and I.

And poor unstuffed Bloemfontein lies there
empty. There are all the shops, and here all the
merchandise. You may guess that the tradesmen
are indignant. Never has there been such a market.
Here is the whole British army clamouring for all
kinds of things ; most furiously perhaps for eatables
and drinkables, baccy and boots. All these things
have long been bought up, and the poor Tommies
can only wander, sullen and unsated, up and down

96 WITH RIMINGTON

the Streets and stare hungrily in at the empty shop
windows ; while out of the empty shop windows the
shopkeeper glares still more hungrily at them. I
have heard how in the Fraser River the fish posi-
tively pack and jostle as they move up. So here ;
but the unhappy sportsman has nothing to catch
them with. Brass coal-scuttles and duplex lamps are
about all that remains in the way of bait, and these
are the only things they won't rise to. He rushes
off to Kitchener. " Give me a train a day. Give

me a train a week." "You be d d," growls

Kitchener. Back he comes. The hungry eyes
are still staring. Incarnate custom flows past
Never in all his life will such a chance recur. Poor
wretch ! It is like some horrible nightmare.

LETTER XV

MODDER REVISITED

Bloemfontein, April 9, 1900.

All the way from Modder River down the Kim-
berley line and up the central one from Naauwpoort,
the most dismal rumours reached me at all stations,
growing more definite as I neared Bloemfontein,
Sanna's Post and Reddersberg ! You have heard
all about them by now. Nearly 1000 casualties
and seven guns taken.

You remember I told you in my last letter that a
big body of Boers marched north across our bows.
Pilcher was out on that side and drew back. The
Boers got wind of him, and wheeled west in pursuit.
Broad wood, not strong enough to hold Thaba
Nchu, moved in on Bloemfontein, the Boers after
him.

It is no fun describing things one has not seen.
The ground I know. It is a flat plain the whole
way, but down the middle of it is a deep sluit or
watercourse, some thirty feet deep, with steep, sud-
den banks, and through this the road dips down
and passes. Broad wood halted on the east side
of it, thus leaving it between himself and home.
In doing this he gave a chance to an enemy who
never throws a chance away. The Boer leader
was Christian De Wet.

I The first thing in the morning the enemy began

»' G

98 WITH RIMINGTON

shelling our camp. The convoy was sent on, not
a scout with it. Meantime, during the night
several hundred Boer marksmen had been sent
round into the sluit, and were now lying right across
poor Broadwood's retreat The Boers, acting with
their devilish coolness as usual, took possession of
the waggons without giving the alarm. Our two
batteries and Roberts' Horse came along, and were
allowed to get to point-blank distance, and then the
volley came; magazine rifles at pistol-shot range.
For the moment the result, as at Magersfontein,
was chaos.

Hornby dealt the first counter - blow. With
the five manageable guns he galloped back a bit
and brought them into action at looo yards. He
showed first that it was going to be a fight and
not a stampede. "Steady and hit back," said Q
Battery. You should hear the men talk of that
battery. It lost almost every man, killed or
wounded, but it was the chief means in restoring
some sort of order to the retreat. But the dis-
aster was past retrieving. In killed, wounded, and
prisoners we lost a third of our force, the whole
convoy, and seven guns out of twelve. I can see
the question you are dying to ask. Why on earth
did Broad wood camp the wrong side of that
ditch? That is exactly the sort of question that
a " blooming civilian " would ask. And then came
Reddersberg and the loss of another five hundred.
Christian De Wet again! And all this within
hearing, as you may say, of the main British army.

These disasters come most inopportunely for us.
Many of the Orange Free State Burghers, when

MODDER REVISITED 99

their capital was taken, seem to have thought it
was all up and some of them took the oath. But
this right and left of De Wet s has changed that
impression. It comes just in time to fan into a
fresh blaze embers that seemed dying out. We
hear that all the farmers who had taken the oath are
under arms again. They had not much choice, for
the fighting Boers simply came along and took them.

My visit to old M odder River was very interest-
ing. It was quite deserted ; only a few odds and
ends of militia, where, when I remember it last,
there were stately great squares of ordered tents
and long lines of guns and limbers and picketed
horses, and the whole place crawled with khaki,
and one felt around one all the bustle and energy
of a huge camp. I felt quite melancholy, as when
one revisits some scene of childhood changed be-
yond recall. Trains were running regularly up to
Kimberley and ordinary citizens were travelling
up and down. It seemed the war was forgotten.
To me, who had been living in the head and
front of a big army for seven months, all these
old signs of peace and a quiet life seemed strange
enough. There were some children going up with
their papas and mamas. As we came one after
another to the lines of hills at Belmont and Gras-
pan they pointed and crowded to the windows, and
papa began to explain that the great fights had
been here, and to tell all about them, quite wrong.

The hills look peaceful enough now. The
children press their noses and little india-rubber
fingers against the glass, and chatter and laugh
and bob up and down —

loo WITH RIMINGTON

" Little they think of those strong limbs
That moulder deep below."

And I sit back in my corner ashamed of my
dirty old tunic and the holes in it, and peer
between two small flaxen heads at hills I last
saw alive with bursting shell.

At Modder village I hired a horse and rode
across the plain to Magersfontein. I must often
have described the place to you — the great flat and
the beak of hill, like a battleship s ram, thrust south-
ward into it Do you know, I felt quite awestruck
as I approached it It seemed quite impossible that
I, alone on my pony, could be going to ride up to
and take single-handed that redoubtable hill, which
had flung back the Highlanders, and remained im-
pregnable to all our shelling. I thought some Boer,
or ghost of a Boer, would pop up with his Mauser
to defend the familiar position once more. How-
ever, none did. I picked my way through the
trench, littered with scraps of clothing and sacks
and blankets, with tins and cooking things, and
broken bottles and all sorts of rags and debris
littered about The descriptions of the place sent
home after the battle are necessarily very inaccu-
rate. Those I have seen all introduce several lines
of trenches and an elaborate system of barbed wire
entanglements. There is only one trench, however,
and no barbed wire, except one fence aloqg a road.
There are, however, a great number of plain wire
strands, about ten yards long perhaps, made fast
between bushes and trees, and left dangling, say,
a foot from the ground. They were not laid in
line, but dotted about in every direction, and, in

MODDER REVISITED loi

anything like a dim light, would infallibly trip an
advancing enemy up in all directions. The single
trench is about five feet deep, the back of it under-
cut so as to allow the defenders to sleep in good
shelter, and the number of old blankets and shawls
lying here showed it had been used for this. It
followed closely the contour of the hill, about
twenty yards from its base. Eastward it was con-
tinued across the flat to the river.

The "disappearing guns," in the same way, were
not disappearing at all. They simply had strong
redoubts of sandbags built round them, the opening
in front being partly concealed by bushes. On
each side of the gun, inside the redoubt, was a
pit, with a little side passage or tunnel, where two
or three gunners could lie in perfect security, and
yet be ready at an instant's notice to serve their
gun. As for the kopjes themselves, every rock
and stone there was split with shell and starred
with bullet marks. The reverse side of the slopes
were steepened with stone walls here and there, as
a protection against shrapnel, and sangars and look-
out places were built at points of vantage. Alto-
gether, though not so elaborate as one had been
led to believe, the defences struck one as extremely
practical and business-like.

I stayed there for two interesting hours. You
can guess with what feelings I looked down on the
plain from Long Tom's redoubt, poor old Joey's
rival, and traced the long line of the river, with its
fringe of willows, and marked, up and down, a
score of places where we had skirmished or hidden,
distinguishing the positions of our guns and pickets,

I02 WITH RIMINGTON

and all the movements and manoeuvres of our army.
For the first time one realised what a bird's-eye
view the Boers had of it all, and how our whole
position and camp lay unrolled like a map almost
at their very feet.

I must add a word to tell you that the boxes
have arrived! I only wish you could have been
here to see the contents distributed. First (this
was about a week ago) came a huge box full of
good things to eat, raisins, figs, a great many tins
of cocoa and milk, chocolate, and other things.
We spread them all out on sheets in the verandah
of the farm in little heaps, and very pretty and
tempting they looked, the white sheets down the
shady verandah, and little piles of sweetmeats and
things dotted all over them. Each man drew a
ticket and chose his eatable, some putting it care-
fully away, others bolting it immediately. One can
get absolutely nothing in Bloemfontein, and the men
were as keen as school children. It was an ex-
cellent idea sending such a lot of figs and raisins.
They are soon gone, but they are so immensely
appreciated while they last ; they give the men the
badly wanted holiday feeling. I almost think that,
in the way of provisions, delicacies are more liked
by men on service, and really do them more good
than the more practically useful things.

Then, a day or two ago, came another great
box full of clothing. Flannel shirts, socks, under-
clothing, &c. There was, especially, in this box, a
packet of little handkerchiefs with a card, and on
it written : " Worked by Mrs. Hope and her little
girls for the soldiers." The little present touched

MODDER REVISITED 103

US all very much. I have kept the card with the
intention of thanking "the little girls" if ever I get
the chance.

We are only about a hundred strong now, and
there were enough things to go round several times.
If you had foreseen and planned the date of their
arrival they could not have reached us at a more
opportune moment. The men have scarcely any-
thing to wear, for all our kit and clothes, everything
we possess, was lost at the Sanna Post surprise
party. I assure you they are grateful. I read them
the names of the subscribers, and they all send their
best thanks. Several came up to me and asked
that their thanks might be sent to you for your
trouble in getting the subscriptions, &c. No money
that could have been expended in any charity could
have been better spent than this. The men have
done fearfully hard work, and were many of them
literally in rags. It has been the greatest help.
The Major has sent you a few words of thanks, but
has asked me to write more particularly. You will
let those know who have helped, will you not, how
this Colonial corps of ours has appreciated your
English present.

And now, farewell. They say we move forward
in a week. I hope it may be true. They also say
we shall finish the campaign in a couple of months.
Fiddle-de-dee! is what I say. Tell H. to educate
little S. as a scout among the Devonshire hedges,
and give him a bit of practical training against the
time he will be old enough to come out There
will be Boers to take him on.

LETTER XVI

JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR

Bloemfontein, Aprily 1900.

Yes, certainly, my own reason for fighting is plain
and strong. I am fighting for a united South
Africa. A united South Africa will, in my opinion,
justify the war. The Boers are genuinely patriotic,
I haven't a doubt. They have every right and
reason to fight to the last for their freedom and
independence. But the continued existence of
independent States on the pattern of the Dutch
republics in the midst of South Africa is bound to
be a perpetual irritation. The development of the
resources of the country will be checked. The
effort to remain separate and apart has obliged, and
will more and more oblige, these States to build
themselves round with a whole system of laws
specially directed to hamper immigration ; and the
richer are found to be the resources of the country,
the more harassing and stringent will this system of
laws have to become. In fact, in this great, free,
and undivided country, to hedge a State round with
artificial barriers of this sort, in order that it may
enjoy a kind of obsolete, old-fashioned independence
of its own, soon becomes intolerable. It is unjust
to all the rest of the continent. The country, if it
is to have its due weight and influence in the affairs

of the world, must be united and make itself felt as

104

JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR 105

a whole. It is not fair on such a country, young
but rapidly developing, to take two of the richest
tracts of it right in its midst and to say, *' You may
go ahead with the development of all the rest, but
these two portions are to be left on one side, to
drop out of the running, to be withered and useless
members, and instead of contributing to the total,
and joining in with the progress of the rest, are to do
all in their power to impede the general advance."

It is bad enough when any naturally separate
State shows the retrograde temper and an inability
to profit by its own resources, but when that State
is an integral part of one great and young continent,
then its action becomes intolerable. I think it is
not only the people in a country that have claims,
but the country itself that has a claim. If you want
South Africa to ripen ultimately into a great first-
class world Power (and that is its claim), instead of
a bunch of fifth-rate antagonistic States, the first
thing to do is to range the country under one
Government, and as a British Government will be
progressive, and a Dutch one will certainly be
retrograde, you must put it under a British one.
That is the first essential, and if any genuinely
patriotic instincts are overridden in the process,
it is very sad, but it cannot be helped. Better this
than that the whole country should miss its destiny.

As for the Uitlanders and their grievances, I
would not ride a yard or fire a shot to right all the
grievances that were ever invented. The mass of
the Uitlanders (/.^., the miners and working-men
of the Rand) had no grievances. I know what I
am talking about, for I have lived and worked

io6 WITH RIMINGTON

among them. I have seen English newspapers
passed from one to another, and roars of laughter
roused by the Times telegrams about these precious
grievances. We used to read the London papers
to find out what our grievances were; and very
frequently they would be due to causes of which we
had never even heard. I never met one miner or
working-man who would have walked a mile to
pick the vote up off the road, and I have known and
talked with scores and hundreds. And no man who
knows the Rand will deny the truth of what I tell you.
No ; but the Uitlanders the world has heard of
were not these, but the Stock Exchange operators,
manipulators of the money market, company floaters
and gamblers generally, a large percentage of them
Jews. They voiced Johannesburg, had the press
in their hands, worked the wires, and controlled
and arranged what sort of information should
reach England. As for the grievances, they
were a most useful invention, and have had a
hand in the making of many fortunes. It was
by these that a feeling of insecurity was intro-
duced into the market which would otherwise have
remained always steady ; it was by these that
the necessary and periodic slump was brought
about. When the proper time came, '* grievances,'*
such as would arrest England's attention and catch
the ear of the people, were deliberately invented;
stories again were deliberately invented of the
excitement, panic, and incipient revolution of
Johannesburg, and by these means was introduced
that feeling of insecurity I have spoken of, which
was necessary to lower prices.

JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR 107

Not a finger would I raise for these fellows.
And another war-cry which I profoundly disbelieve
in, and which will probably turn out in the long
run to be a hoax, is the ** Dutch South Africa"
cry. How any one who knows his South Africa,
who knows the isolation of life among the farmers,
and the utter stagnation of all ideas that exists
among the people, can credit the Boers with vault-
ing ambitions of this sort, is always a surprise to
me. I fancy such theories are mostly manufac-
tured for the English market. Naturally I form
my opinion more or less from the men in our
corps who seem best worth attending to. They,
most of them, have an intimate knowledge of the
Colony and of one or both of the Republics, and
I do not find that they take the ** Great Dutch
Conspiracy" at all seriously. Some people main-
tain that, though perhaps the Boer farmers them-
selves were not in it, yet their leaders were.
But the farmers form the vast majority of the
Boers. They are an independent and stiff-necked
type; and it is as absurd to suppose that their
leaders could pledge them to such vast and
visionary schemes as it is to suppose that such
schemes could have the slightest interest for them.
As a matter of fact, what has given old Kruger
his long ascendency is the way in which he shares
and embodies the one or two simple, dogged ideas
of the mass of the Burghers. " God bless the
Boers and damn the British " are two of the chief
of these, but they only apply them within their
own borders.

But it's a case of the proof of the pudding. If

io8 WITH RIMINGTON

this scheme for a general rising existed, why is
not the Colony in arms now ? What do you think
the answer to that is ? Why, that the plot did
indeed exist and had been carefully matured, and
that it would have come off all right if the Boers
had marched boldly south ; but that, for some
unknown reason, their hearts failed them at the
last moment, and they didn t dare go on and reap
what they had sown. "If only they had marched
on Cape Town, the whole Colony would have
risen."

Doesn't it sometimes occur to you that, when
his own interests are concerned, the Boer is a
tolerably wide-awake gentleman, and that he knows
how to look after those interests of his almost as
well as we can teach him ? Are you prepared
to believe of him : first, that he laid down and
organised this vast conspiracy ; second, that he
deliberately armed himself to the teeth with a view
of carrying it out ; third, that he chose his own
time for war and declared it when he thought the
moment was ripe ; fourth, that he gained advantages
to begin with, and had the Colony at his feet ; and
fifth, that he was seized with a sudden paralysis
at the last moment, and found himself unable to
march ahead and gather in the recruits who were
on tip-toe to join him? No, no. If the plot ex-
isted, why didn't the plot work.^ It had every
chance.

I will tell you what there was. There were
a number of appeals and letters (some of them I
have seen) from families in the north to their rela-
tions in the Colony, praying for sympathy, and

^

I

JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR 109

perhaps for active help. But these were merely
personal appeals. There is no hard and fast line, so
far as the people are concerned, between the Colony,
Orange Free State, and Transvaal. The same
big families, or clans almost, have their branches
in all three, and probably there is not a family of
any consequence in either that has not a number
of relations in the other two. Consequently as
war drew closer the excitement and anxiety it caused
spread southward from family to family. There
was a good deal of sympathy felt, no doubt, by
the Dutch in the Colony for their relations farther
north, and there has been surreptitious help, in-
formation given, and sympathy. But there the
matter has usually ended. There have been very
few recruits, and there never was an organised
conspiracy.

It is curious to notice how the several sections
of the Dutch were picked up just as they were laid
down. The most determined spirits of all, the most
bitter against English rule, the irreconcilables, had
fought their way farthest north, and formed the
Transvaal. South of them came the Orange Free
State, just across the Colony border — independent,
but not so bitter ; while in the Colony itself remained
all those weaker brethren whose hearts had failed
them in the Great Trek days, and who had remained
under our government.

The present war has revealed these strata just
as they were deposited. The northern State was
the leader and aggressor. The southern one, drawn
in by its fiercer neighbour, was still true to the
cause. And so, too, the Dutch of the Colony were

no WITH RIMINGTON

exactly to-day where they had been sixty years ago.
They could no more join the war than they could
join the trek. And, in spite of individual appeals to
relations, &c., you may be sure that the northerners
knew pretty accurately how the land lay. Their
own action shows this.

Therefore, I put aside utterly, so far as I am
concerned, the Uitlander and Dutch conspiracy
arguments, of which one hears so much, as things
which, though they may occupy the attention of
leading article writers in London, yet are not con-
vincing, and have no smack of reality to any one
who knows something about the Uitlanders from
personal observation, and something about the
Boers and Boer life from personal observation. I
put these aside and come back to the only argu-
ment that will really wash, that has no clap-
trap in it. And that is South Africa under one
Government, and under a strong and progressive
Government. Human nature is pretty much the
same all the world over, and if the Boers have
been to blame in the past, no doubt the Britons
have been just as much to blame. Anyway, it is
impossible and would be useless to strike a balance
between them now. The fact that stands out
salient and that has to be dealt with in the present
is that South Africa is divided against itself; that
it never can and never will step up into its proper
place until it is united, and that, therefore, to fight
for a united South Africa is to fight on the right
side and in a good cause.

And one thing I much like this plain reason for
is, that it makes it easy for one to do full justice to

JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR m

one's adversaries. I admire their courage and
patriotism very much, I acknowledge fully their
dogged obstinacy in defence and their dangerous
coolness in retreat, and I am sorry for them, too,
and think it a sad thing that such brave men
should be identified with so impossible a cause.
You must be careful how you believe the reports
sent home by war correspondents. I suppose
people like to hear harm of their enemies, and a
daily papers best business is to give the public
what the public wants rather than what is strictly
true. The consequence is that accounts of Boer
fighting and of the Boers themselves (traitors and
cowards are the commonest words) are now appear-
ing which are neither more nor less than a disgrace
to the papers which publish them. I don't know
since when it has become a British fashion to
slander a brave adversary, but I must say it
seems to me a singularly disgusting one, the more
so when it is coupled with a gross and indis-
criminating praise of our own valour and per-
formances.

LETTER XVII

THE MARCH NORTH

Near Johannesburg, May 31, 1900.

''May ist, 1900. — The long - looked, long-
waited for moment has come at last. We march
from Bloemfontein on a glorious autumn morn-
ing, in fresh cool air and the sky cloudless.
Forty miles off Thaba Nchu, that hill of ill
omen, might be ten, so bold and clear it stands
up above the lower ranges. The level plain
between the island hills is streaked with gauzy
mist.

"North of Bloemfontein we get into a pretty,
uneven country with several level-topped kopjes
set end to end like dominoes, and thickets of
grey mimosas clustering in the hollows. The
great column is moving forward on our left.
Big ambulance waggons, with huge white covers
nodding one behind the other, high above the
press ; the naval twelve-pounders, with ten-oxen
teams and sailors swinging merrily alongside; in-
fantry marching with the indescribable regular
undulation of masses of drilled men, reminding
one of the ripple of a centipede's legs ; field artil-
lery, horse artillery, transport waggons, more in-
fantry, -more guns — they stretch in a long, dark
river right across the plain.

"Now a halt is called. The men drop on one

ixa

THE MARCH NORTH 113

knee where they stand, or hitch up their knap-
sacks to ease their tired shoulders. Then on
again, guns jolting, men sweating, marching at
ease, with helmets on wrong side first to shelter
their eyes, and rifles with butt-ends over shoulders.
They have a rest after a few hours, and fall out
by the wayside, fling off the heavy accoutrements,
light pipes, and fall a-yarning, stretched on the
grass, or pull out scraps of old newspapers to
read."

That was written the day we left Bloemfon-
tein, just a month ago, and 250 miles away.
We have come along well, have we not.^

Brandfort is a little town on the railway some
forty miles north of Bloemfontein, overlooked by
a big rocky kopje on the north. Here we find
our dear friends once more assembled to meet us
after this long interval, and we have a little battle
with them, of which I will spare you the descrip-
tion. An incident of some interest was the ap-
pearance of the *' Irish Brigade " from the Natal
side, who held the hill above the town. Riming-
ton got leave from Hutton to turn them out, which
he did so cleverly, and taking us at them at such
a pace that we did the business without loss,
except, indeed, in horses, of which several were
hit. I don't know if the two or three prisoners
we took (and that we had some thought of shoot-
ing out of hand) were a fair sample of the brigade,
but fouler -mouthed scoundrels I think I never
set eyes on.

Our plan of advance has been all along very
simple and effective. Our centre keeps the railway,

H

114 WITH RIMINGTON

while our wings, composed largely of mounted
troops, are spread wide on each side, and threaten
by an enclosing movement to envelop the enemy
if he attempts to make a stand. These tactics
have been perfectly successful, and the Boers have
been forced again and again to abandon strong
positions from a fear of being surrounded. A
bear's hug gives the notion of the strategy. No
sooner do our great arms come round than away
slip the Boers while there is still time. The Vet
River was probably their strongest position, and
here they did make some attempt at a stand.
This is how things looked that morning :—

'^ May stA, 12.30. — We have just got to the
big slopes overlooking Vet River. The enemy
is in a strong position along the river-bed, which
is thickly wooded, and in the hills beyond. Our
left has touched them, and as I write this our
pompon on that side has a couple of goes.
Kaffirs tell us that the valley is full of Boers.
Boers everywhere ; in the river-bed, in the sluits
on the far side, in the hills ; and that they have
plenty of guns. It is something like the Modder
River position, but stronger, inasmuch as there
are ranges of hills on the far side of and over-
looking the river; so that they have two lines
of defence, the second commanding the first. An
excellent arrangement Walking forward to the
brow, a few of us had the whole panorama at
our feet We had no idea it was so strong, and
you might notice a thoughtful look on more than
one face as we walked back to our men behind
the hill.

THE MARCH NORTH 115

" We have now got the guns to a nearer rise,
sloping to the river, and are standing in extended
order waiting for the next move. This will take
the form of artillery practice, and it is prophesied
that we shall get it pretty hot, as they will cer-
tainly have better guns than our twelve-pounders.
The sun is melting. Guns unlimber (1.15).
Teams jingle back, and the guns open fire from
edge of slope, each one as it delivers its shot
starting back as if with surprise at its own per-
formance.

**3 P.M. — Our guns are blazing away merrily
now. The Boers, if they have guns, are very
reticent They have sent us a few shells, which
have done no harm, mostly falling short. Hamil-
ton is said to be at or near Winburg. If this
is so, he will be threatening the retreat of the
Boers hefe soon. Meantime a huge column, miles
long, is crawling in the distance across the flattish
grass sweeps far to the east This is the main
column, under Lord Roberts."

We thought, you see, that we were in for
quite a big fight We thought the same often
later. At this river or this range they will m^ke
their stand. But always, as here at Vet River,
we advanced on such a wide front that the enemy
had to retire betimes to avoid being outflanked,
and so the " stand " was never made. We joined
Ian Hamilton at Kronstad, and while we were
out with him on the east side the enemy once
or twice attacked our flank or rearguard in the
most determined manner. However, we held on
our way very composedly, our waggons rumbling

n6 WITH RIMINGTON

along sleepily indifferent, while the Boers with all
their might would be hanging on to our tail.
Usually, after we had towed them for a day or
two, they would let go, and then another lot would
come along and lay hold. The first party would
then retire to its own village and district, feeling,
no doubt, that it had barked us off the premises
in great style, and lay in wait for the next army
of ten or twenty thousand men that should happen
to pass that way.

It is the convoy that always hampers our move-
ments so, that dictates the formation of an advance
and makes us almost a passive target to attack.
Our convoy with Ian Hamilton must have been
seven or eight miles long, and was often delayed for
hours at fords and creeks, where scenes of wild con-
fusion took place and you were deafened with yell-
ing Kaffirs and cracking whips. This convoy has
of course to be guarded throughout, which means a
very attenuated and consequently weakened force,
an attack on one part of which might be carried
on without the knowledge of the rest of the column,
or the possibility of its giving much help anyway.
When we left Lindley we had a sharp rearguard
action, and the Boers pushed their attack very
vigorously. They did the same on the right flank,
and the advance guard also had some fighting.
Neither of these parties knew that the others were
engaged at all, and probably the bulk of the main
column were quite ignorant that a shot had been
fired anywhere.

Lindley is one of those peculiar, bare, little
Dutch towns, the presence of which on the lonely

THE MARCH NORTH 117

hillside always seems so inexplicable. It is even
more than usually hideous. There is the inevitable
big church, the only large building in the place,
occupying a central position, and looking very
frigid and uninviting, like the doctrine it incul-
cates ; a few large general stores, where you can buy
anything from a plough to a pennyworth of sweets,
and some single-storey, tin-roofed houses or cottages
flung down in a loose group. But around it there
are none of the usual signs of a town neighbourhood.
No visible roads lead to it; no fertile and cultivated
land surrounds it ; no trees or parks or pleasure
grounds are near it. The houses might have been
pitched down yesterday for all the notice the veldt
takes of them. Spread out over the hills and
valleys for some hundreds of miles each side this
barren treeless veldt, which, after all, is the main
fact of South African life, seems to carry these little
unexpected towns on its breast with the same ease
and unconsciousness that the sea carries its fleets of
ships ; surrounding and lapping at their very hulls ;
not changed itself nor influenced by their presence.
During our stay of a day or two at Lindley
it became increasingly evident that the people of
that neighbourhood resented our presence there.
Our pickets were constantly engaged. There are
some rather abrupt hills on the east side of the
town, among the nearer ones of which our look-
outs were stationed while the Boers prowled among
the others. Here the Mausers and Lee-Metfords
talked incessantly, and the conversation was carried
on in a desultory way down in the river valley and
among the rolling hills on the southern side. It

ii8 WITH RIMINGTON

was plain that the enemy was quite prepared to
" put up a show " for us, and no one was surprised,
when the morning of our departure came, to see
the strong force of Mounted Infantry told off for
rearguard, or note the presence of the General
himself in that part of the field.

There are long slanting hills that rise above
the village on its south side, the crests of which
were occupied by our pickets. As the pickets
were withdrawn, the Boers rapidly followed them
up, occupied the crest in turn, and began to put in
a heavy fire and press hard on our retreating men.

From a square and flat-topped kopje just north
of the town we had the whole scene of the with-
drawal down the opposite slopes before our eyes.
Our Mounted Infantry were hotly engaged but
perfectly steady. They lay in the grass in open
order, firing, their groups of horses clustered
lower down the hill; then retired by troops and
set to work again. This giving ground steadily
and by degrees is a test of coolness and steadi-
ness, and it was easy to see that our men were
under perfect control. At last they came under
the protection of our hill. We had got our battery
of guns up it, and it was a moment of great
satisfaction to all concerned, except possibly the
Boers, when the first angry roar rose above the
splutter of rifles, and the shell pitched among some
of the foremost of the enemy's sharpshooters. In
a duel of this sort the interference of artillery is
usually regarded as decisive. Guns, as people say,
have **a moral effect" that is sometimes out of
proportion to the actual damage they inflict. Any-

THE MARCH NORTH 119

way, skirmishers seldom advance under gun-fire,
and the Boers on this occasion were decisively
checked by our battery. Even when the guns left,
we were able from the vantage-ground of the hill
to keep them at arm's length until the time came
to catch up the column.

On the right flank they were more successful,
pressing home a heavy attack on the Mounted In-
fantry on that side. A squadron got cut off and
rushed by the enemy, who rode in to it shoot-
ing at pistol-shot distance, and shouting " Hands
up ! " We lost pretty heavily in casualties, besides
about fifty prisoners. These small mishaps are of
no great importance in themselves, but they en-
courage the enemy no doubt to go on fighting.
The story as it goes round the farms will lose
nothing in the telling. Probably in a very short
time it will amount to the rout of Hamilton's
column, and the captured troopers will lend a colour
to the yarn. Burghers who have taken the oath of
allegiance will be readier than ever to break it
However, time no doubt will balance the account
all right in the long-run.

From Lindley, fighting a little every day, we
marched north to Heilbron, where Broad wood got
hold of the Boer convoy by the tail, and succeeded
in capturing a dozen waggons. From there we cut
into the railway and crossed it at Vredefort, passing
through the main body of the advance in doing so.
Anything like the sight of these vast columns all
pushing in one direction you never saw. In this
country one can often see thirty or forty miles, and
in that space on the parched, light-coloured ground

120 WITH RIMINGTON

you may see from some point of vantage five or six
separate streams of advance slowly rolling north-
ward, their thin l)lack lines of convoy overhung by
a heavy pall of dust As we closed in and became in-
volved for a moment in the whole mass of the general
advance, though accustomed to think no small beer
of ourselves as an army, for we number ii,ooo
men, we realised that we were quite a small fraction
of the British force. Endless battalions of infantry,
very dusty and grimy, but going light and strong
(you soon get into the habit of looking attentively
at infantry to see how they march); guns, bearer-
companies, Colonial Horse, generals and their
staffs, go plodding and jingling by in a procession
that seems to be going on for ever. And beside
and through them the long convoys of the different
units, in heavy masses, come groaning and creak-
ing along, the oxen sweating, the dust whirling, the
naked Kaffirs yelling, and the long whips going
like pistol-shots. The whole thing suggests more
a national migration than the march of an army.
And ever on the horizon hang new clouds of dust,
and on distant slopes the scattered advance guards
of new columns dribble into view. I fancy the Huns
or the Goths, in one of their vast tribal invasions,
may have moved like this. Or you might liken us
to the dusty pilgrims on some great caravan route
with Pretoria for our Mecca.

We crossed the Vaal at Lindiquies Drift, being
now on the west flank, and met the Boers the day
before yesterday two miles from here on the West
Rand. The fight was a sharp one. They were in
a strong position on some ridges, not steep, but

THE MARCH NORTH 121

with good cover among stones and rocks. We
came at them from the west, having made a circuit.
Our advance was hidden by the rolling of the
ground, but the enemy guessed it, and sent a few
shells at a venture, which came screaming along
and buried themselves in the ground without doing
much damage that I could see beyond knocking a
Cape cart to pieces. By 2 p.m. we had crawled up
the valley side and got several batteries of artillery
where they could shell the Boer position. The two
great "cow-guns," so called from the long teams
of oxen that drag them, were hauled up the slope.
The enemy got an inkling of our intention now,
and his shells began to fall more adjacent. Then
our fire began. It was difficult to see clearly. The
dry grass of the veldt, which is always catching
fire, was burning between us and the Boers ;
long lines of low smouldering fire, eating their way
slowly along, and sending volumes of smoke drift-
ing downward, obscuring the view. Half the
ground was all black and charred where the fire
had been; the rest white, dry grass. The Boer
position was only about two miles from our ridge ;
a long shallow hollow of bare ground, without
bush or rock, or any sort of cover on it, except
a few anthills, separating us from them. Our field-
batteries opened, and then the great five-inch cow-
guns roared out. We ourselves were close to
these with Hamilton (we are acting as his body-
guard), and with the other officers I crept up to the
ridge and lay among the stones watching the whole
show. After a shot or two all our guns got the
range, a mere stone's throw for the great five-

122 WITH RIMINGTON

inchers. Their shrapnel burst along the rise, and
we could see the hail of bullets after each explosion
dusting the ground along the top where the Boers
lay. The enemy answered very intermittently,
mostly from their Long Tom far back, which our
big guns kept feeling for. I never heard anything
like the report of these big guns of ours and the
shriek of the shells as they went on their way.

After the cannonade had been kept up for a
bit, the infantry began their advance. This was, I
think, the finest performance I have seen in the
whole campaign. The Gordons did it ; the Dargai
battalion. They came up, line by line, behind our
ridge and lay down along with us. Then, at the
word "Advance," the front line got up and walked
quietly down the slope, and away towards the
opposite hill, walking in very open order, with gaps
of about fifteen yards between the men. A moment
or two would pass. Then when the front line had
gone about fifty yards, the " Advance " would again
be repeated, and another line of kilted men would
lift themselves leisurely up and walk off. So on,
line behind line, they went on their way, while we
watched them, small dark figures clearly seen on
the white grass, through our glasses with a painful
interest Before they had reached half way across,
the vicious, dull report, a sort of double " crick-
crack," of the Mausers began. Our guns were rain-
ing shrapnel along the enemy's position, shooting
steady and fast to cover the Gordons' advance ; but
the Boers, especially when it comes to endurance,
are dogged fellows. They see our infantry coming,
and nothing will move them till they have had their

\

THE MARCH NORTH 123

shot Soon we can see the little puffs of dust
round the men, that mark where the bullets are
striking. All the further side, up the long gradual
slope to the Boer rocks, has been burnt black and
bare, and the bullets, cutting through the cinders,
throw up spots of dust, that show white against the
black. Men here and there stagger and fall. It
is hard to see whether they fall from being hit, or
whether it is to shoot themselves, The fire gets
faster and faster, our guns thunder, and through the
drifting smoke of the veldt fires we can still see the
Gordons moving onward. Then among the look-
ing-out group, crouched near the guns, goes a little
gasp !and mutter of excitement. We catch on the
black background, glistening in the sun, the quick
twinkle of a number of little steel points. They are
fixing bayonets ! Now the little figures move quicker.
They make for the left side of the ridge. A minute
more, and along the sky-line we see them appear,
a few at first, then more and more. They swing to
the right, where the enemy's main position lies, and
disappear. There is a sharp, rapid interchange of
shots, and then the fire gradually lessens and dies
away, and the position is captured. They have lost
a hundred men in ten minutes, but they've done
the trick.

Later on, Hamilton, one of the most beloved of
our Generals, gallops forward, and on the hill they
have won, as evening is closing, says a few words
to the Gordons. " Men of the Gordons, officers of
the Gordons, I want to tell you how proud I am of
you ; of my father's old regiment, and of the regi-
ment I was born in. You have done splendidly.

124 WITH RIMINGTON

To-morrow all Scotland will be ringing with the
news." This charge will, no doubt, take rank as
one of the most brilliant things of the war.

Next morning at dawn, escorting the cow-guns,
I came to where the Boers had held out so long
among the scattered rocks. The Gordons were
burying some of the Boer dead. There were
several quite youngsters among them. One was
a boy of not more than fourteen, I should think,
like an English schoolboy. One of the Gordons
there told me he saw him, during the advance,
kneeling behind a stone and firing. He was shot
through the forehead. There is something pathetic
and infinitely disagreeable in finding these mere
children opposed to one.

These infantry advances are the things that
specially show up the courage of our troops. Each
man, walking deliberately and by himself, is being
individually shot at for the space of ten minutes or
more, the bullets whistling past him or striking the
ground near him. To walk steadily on through a
fire of this sort, which gets momentarily hotter and
better aimed as he diminishes the distance between
himself and the enemy, in expectation every instant
of knowing "what it feels like," is the highest test
of courage that a soldier in these days can give.
Nothing the mounted troops are, as a rule, called
upon to perform comes near it. Knowing exactly
from experience what lay in front of them, these
Gordons were as cool as cucumbers. As they lay
among the stones with us before beginning the
advance, I spoke to several, answering their
questions and pointing them out the lie of the

THE MARCH NORTH 125

ground and the Boer position. You could not have
detected the least trace of anxiety or concern in
any of them. The front rank, when the order to
advance was given, stepped down with a swing of
the kilt and a swagger that only a Highland regi-
ment has. " Steady on the left ; *' they took their
dressing as they reached the flat. Some one sang
out, " When under fire wear a cheerful face ; " and
the men laughingly passed the word along, ** When
under fire wear a cheerful face."

LETTER XVIII

PRETORIA

Pretoria, /i^»e6j 190a
It IS generally considered rather a coup in war, I
believe, to take the enemy's capital, isn't it ? like
taking a queen at chess. We keep on taking capi-
tals, but I can't say it seems to make much difference.
The Boers set no store by them apparently ; neither
Bloemfontein nor Pretoria have been seriously de-
fended, and they go on fighting after their loss just
as if nothing had happened.

For months Pretoria has been our beacon, and
at first it seemed quite an impossibly long way off.
Looked at from Bloemfontein, across 300 miles of
dreary veldt and rugged kopjes and steep-banked
rivers, and allowing for the machinations and devil-
ments of ten or fifteen thousand Boers, our arrival
here did seem a vague, indefinite, and far-off
prospect. And yet in a day or two over the
month here we are. Lord Roberts has brought
us up in the most masterly way. He has moved
with a big central column on the railway, while at
the same time other columns, stretched far to right
and left, moved parallel and threatened to outflank
and enclose the enemy at every stand. So with
wings beating and body steadily advancing, like
some great kite or bird of prey, we have flapped

our way northward.

196

PRETORIA 127

Even here no stand was made. The town is
strongly defended with several new forts, armed, we
were told, with lo-inch guns, with a range of about
twelve miles, which we supposed would put the noses
of our poor cow-guns completely out of joint The
Boers had burnt the grass on all the hills to the
south of the town, so that the blackened surface
might show up the khaki uniform of our men,
and offer a satisfactory mark, and things generally,
as we slowly approached the tall black rampart. of
mountain south of Pretoria, seemed to point to a
big engagement. But here, as so often elsewhere,
it was borne in upon them that if they finally stayed
and defended their capital, they would assuredly be
surrounded and cut off ; and so, though only at the
last moment, we hear, they decided to leave They
put up an afternoon fight on the hills near the
town, but this was only the work of a handful of
men, probably intended to stave us off for a while
while they finished their packing in Pretoria and
got away. Lord Roberts got a battery up to the
crest of a great big ridge, and we got a pompon
up a still steeper one, and a vigorous cannonade
was kept up and a good deal of rifle-fire indulged
in till nearly dark. But this is often very deceptive.
No doubt if it was the first battle you had been at,
you would have put down the casualties, judging
from the noise made, at several hundred. As a
matter of fact, the peculiar thing about all this
shooting is that, like the cursing in the Jackdaw
of Rheims, *' nobody seems one penny the worse."
Loading is now so easy that it is not the slightest
trouble to fire. The consequence is that a glimpse

128 WITH RIMINGTON

of a Boer's head on the sky-line a couple of miles
off will find work for a battery of guns and a few
score of rifles for the rest of the afternoon. About
sunset time, when it begins to get cold, they will
limber up and come away, and the report will go
in that our shelling was very accurate, but that the
enemy's loss could not be positively ascertained.

The day after the fight we made a triumphal
procession through Pretoria, and marched past
Lord Roberts and his staff, and all his generals
and their staffs, assembled in the big square facing
the Parliament House. We came along a long,
straight street, with verandahed houses standing
back in gardens, and trees partly shading the road,
a ceaseless, slow, living river of khaki ; solid blocks
of infantry, with measured, even tread, the rifle
barrels lightly rising and falling with the elastic,
easy motion that sways them altogether as the
men keep time ; cavalry, regular and irregular,
and, two by two, the rumbling guns. Mile after
mile of this steady, deliberate, muddy tide that
has crept so far, creeps on now through the Dutch
capital. Look at the men ! Through long ex-
posure and the weeding out of the weak ones,
they are now all picked men. The campaign has
sorted them out, and every battalion is so much
solid gristle and sinew. They show their condition
in their lean, darkly-tanned faces ; in the sinewy,
blackened hands that grasp the rifle butts ; in the
way they carry themselves, with shoulders well
back and heads erect, and in the easy, vigorous
swing of their step.

I should like, while I am about it, to speak

PRETORIA 129

to you rather more at length about the British
soldier. I should think my time spent on service,
especially the five months in the ranks, time well
spent, if only for the acquaintanceship it has
brought with soldiers. In the field, on the march,
in bivouac, I have met and associated and talked
with them on equal terms. Under fire and in
action I have watched them, have sat with them,
long afternoons by rivers and under trees, and
yarned with them on tramps in the blazing sun.
Their language, habits, and character have to some
extent grown familiar to me.

They are not, to begin with, a bit like the
description I sometimes read of them in news-
papers. In one of Kipling's books there is a
description of a painting of a soldier in action ;
realistic and true to life ; dirty and grimed and
foul, with an assegai wound across the ankle, and
the terror of death in his face. The dealer who
took the picture made the artist alter it; had the
uniform cleaned and the straps pipe-clayed, and
the face smoothed and composed, and the ferocity
and despair toned down to a plump and well-fed
complacency, and made, in fact, all those alterations
which were supposed to suit it to the public taste.

The newspapers describe the British soldier, I

suppose, to suit the public too, much on the same

lines. He is the most simpering, mild-mannered,

and perfect gentleman. If you asked him to loot a

farm, he would stare at you in shocked amazement.

He is, of course, "as brave as a lion," his courage

being always at that dead level of perfect heroism

which makes the term quite meaningless. Except,

I

I30 WITH RIMINGTON

however, when they are shining with the light of
battle, his eyes regard all people, friends and foes
alike, with an expression of kindness and brotherly
love. He never uses a strong word, and under all
circumstances the gentleness and sweet decorum of
his manner is such as you would never expect to
meet outside the Y.M.C.A.

This is about as much like our dear, old, real
Tommy Atkins as Kipling's portrait was. Such a
likeness does no honour to the man. It is simply
lifeless. Whatever Tommy is, he is a man ; not
a round-eyed, pink-cheeked waxwork stuffed with
bran. The truth is coarse and strong, but he can
stand having the truth told about him.

Soldiers as a class (I take the town-bred, slum-
bred majority, mind) are men who have discarded the
civil standard of morality altogether. They simply
ignore it. This, no doubt, is why civilians fight
shy of them. In the game of life they don t play
the same rules, and the consequence is a good deal
of misunderstanding, until finally the civilian says
he won't play with the Tommy any more. In
soldiers' eyes lying, theft, drunkenness, bad language,
&c., are not evils at all. They steal like jackdaws.
No man's kit or belongings are safe for an instant in
their neighbourhood unless under the owner's eye.
To " lift " or ** pinch " anything from anybody is one
of the Tommy's ordinary everyday interests, a thing
to be attended to and borne in mind along with his
other daily cares and duties. Nothing is more
common than to see some distracted private rush-
ing about in search of a missing article, which he
declares in anguished tones he has only just that

PRETORIA 131

instant laid down ; his own agitation a marked
contrast to the elaborate indifference of every one
near him.

As to language, I used to think the language of
a merchant ship's fo'c'sle pretty bad, but the language
of Tommies in point of profanity quite equals, and in
point of obscenity beats it hollow. This department
is a speciality of his. Of course, after a little it be-
comes simply meaningless, and you scarcely notice
it, but the haphazard and indiscriminate way, quite
regardless of any meaning, in which he interlards
ordinary sentences with beastly words, at first
revolts you. Lying he treats with the same large
charity. To lie like a trooper is quite a sound
metaphor. He invents all sorts of elaborate lies
for the mere pleasure of inventing them. He will
come back from headquarters and tell you of the
last despatch which he has just read with his own
eyes (a victory or disaster, according to his mood
at the moment), with all kinds of realistic details
added ; and you go and see for yourself, and there
is no despatch at all. Looting, again, is one of his
perpetual joys. Not merely looting for profit,
though I have seen Tommies take possession of the
most ridiculous things — perambulators and sewing
machines, with a vague idea of carting them home
somehow — but looting for the sheer fun of the
destruction ; tearing down pictures to kick their
boots through them ; smashing furniture for the
fun of smashing it, and may be dressing up in
women's clothes to finish with, and dancing among
the ruins they have made. To pick up a good
heavy stone and send it wallop right through the

132 WITH RIMINGTON

works of a piano is a great moment for Tommy. I
daresay there is something in it, you know.

These are roughish traits, are they not? Sit
down by this g^oup of Tommies by the water-hole
in the mid-day halt They are filthy dirty, poor
fellows. Their thin, khaki, sweat-stained uniforms
are rotting on them. They have taken off tunics
and shirts, and among the rags of flannel are
searching for the lice which pester and annoy them.
Here is a bit of raw humanity for you to study, a
sample of the old Anglo-Saxon breed ; what do you
make of it } Are thieving, and lying, and looting,
and bestial talk very bad things? If they are.
Tommy is a bad man. But for some reason or
other, since I got to know him, I have thought
rather less of the iniquity of these things than I
did before.

The day has been fearfully hot, as usual, and
they have done a long march. They were up last
night on picket, and have had nothing to eat all
day as yet but a biscuit or two and a cup
of milkless coffee. This sort of thing has been
going on for months. They are tired and hungry
and footsore. More than one falls back where he
sits and drops into a sleep of utter exhaustion.
But of any serious grumbling or discontent there
is no sign. A few curse at the heat perhaps,
but their hardships are mostly a subject for rough
chaff and Cockney jokes. You thought you were
roughing it a good deal, but look at the state these
men are in. You gave yourself credit for some
endurance, but look at their unaffected cheeriness.
The whole army is the same. In their thousands,

PRETORIA 133

as you see them pass, the prevailing expression
down all the swarthy faces is one of unfailing good-
humour. They make no more of their hardships
than Sandow of throwing about bars and bells that
would crush an ordinary man flat. It dawns on
one, the depth of manhood that is implied in en-
durance like this. **We sometimes get licked at
first, but we mostly come out all right in the end."
Tommy's good-natured face as he sweats it across
the veldt gives some meaning to that boast.

In the crowds of his mates in the East End, in
crowds of the unemployed and the like, you see
the same temper — a sort of rough, good spirits, an
indomitable, incorrigible cheerfulness that nothing,
no outward misery, seems able to damp. In West
End crowds (Hyde Park, for instance) you don't
get this. There are smiles and laughs, as you look
about at the faces, but they seem merely individual
— one here, another there. In the crowd of roughs
— ^though goodness knows there is little cause for
merriment, so far as one can see — there is a quite
different, deeper, and more universal feeling of bluff
cheeriness, not put on, but unconscious, as though,
in spite of present misery, things were going right
for them somehow. I should say an East End
crowd gave one a far deeper impression of animal
spirits, of hope and cheeriness, than a West End
one. And it is the same with soldiers. The officers
are fine fellows, but in this point they yield to the
soldiers.

And it means a lot. Of what use is even
courage itself if it goes with impatience and a flash
in the pan endurance ? This quality of cheerfulness

134 WITH RIMINGTON

is really the quality that outlasts all others. It
means not only that you have an army in good
fighting trim to-day, but that this time next year,
or the year after, you will still have an army in
good fighting trim. In the long-run it wears down
all opposition, but it is not a characteristic you
notice at first. Gradually it makes itself felt, and
gradually it governs your estimate of the whole
army. And then the peculiar wickedness of Tommy
(a child's naughtiness for superficiality) ceases to
offend you so much. Rather your own regula-
tion code seems a trifle less important than it did.
Let's all lie and steal ; what does it signify ? I
would lie and steal till the crack of doom to gain
the serene endurance of the British soldier.^

Of his courage one need scarcely speak. It
is a subject on which a great deal of rubbish has
been talked. It is not true that all ^soldiers are
brave, nor is it true that even brave soldiers will
go anywhere and do anything. On the other hand,
it certainly is true that our soldiers' courage — that
is, their apparent unconsciousness of danger — strikes
one as very remarkable. You need not believe
more about the light of battle and the warrior^ s
lust^ and all that sort of thing, than you want to.
There is very little excitement in a modern battle,
and the English soldier is not an excitable man,
but this only makes the display of courage more
striking. Nothing can be more terrible than one
of our slow charges, a charge in which all the peril

^ This account is true of a type, but I should not let it stand if I
thought it would make the reader forget that, besides these, there are
any number of men in the army who lead lives in every way straight
and honourable.

^^T»»^ — -w^^^^^mim

PRETORIA 135

which used to be compressed into a hundred yards'
rush in hot blood is spread out over an afternoon's
walk. I am sure any man who has ever taken
part in one of those ghastly processions, and, at
thirty yards interval, watched the dust-spots, at first
promiscuous, gradually concentrating round him, and
listened to the constant soft whine or nearer hiss
of passing bullets, and seen men fall and plodded
on still, solitary, waiting his turn, would look upon
the maddest and bloodiest rush of old days as a
positive luxury by comparison.

What I think about our soldiers' courage is that it
is of such a sort that it takes very little out of them.
One of the foreign officers on Lord Roberts' staff,
in a criticism in one of his own papers, has written
that the English infantry, more than any he knows,
has the knack of fighting and marching and keep-
ing on at it, day after day, without getting stale
or suffering from any reaction. The fact is, our
Tommies go into a fight with much the same in-
different good-humour that they do everything else
with. Towards the end of each day's march the
soldiers all begin to look out for firewood, and if at
that time you knock up against the enemy, you may
see our infantry advancing to the attack with big
logs tied to their backs and sticking up over their
heads. Though it encumbers and bothers them
and makes them much more conspicuous, not a
Tommy will abandon his wood. Supper is a reality.
The thought of being shot does not bother him.
Men who fight like this can fight every day.

Taking him altogether, then, your general im-
pression of the Tommy is one of solid good temper and

136 WITH RIMINGTON

Strength. Of his faults and failings, when you get
to know him, you cannot help making light ; for his
faults are faults of conduct only, while his strength
is strength of character. As an individual, I dare-
say you could criticise him, but in the mass, for the
strength of breed he shows and the confidence he
gives you in your race, you will have nothing but
admiration.

I have told you what I could about him, because
he is a man you have never seen, and will probably
never have a chance of seeing. For no one who
has not seen Tommy in the field has seen him at
all. If you love England, you must love the army.
If you are a patriot, not merely a Jingo, the sight of
these ragged battalions passing will give you such a
thrill as only very fine and splendid things do give ;
and very proud you will feel if ever you have had
a hand in sharing their work and been admitted to
some sort of fellowship with them.

These are the lads who in their packed thousands
tramped yesterday through Pretoria. Past old
Kruger's house, a cottage you might almost call it,
with its lions in front and several old burghers in
black crying in the verandah, we went at a foot s
pace, choking in the cloud of red dust, with the
strains of " God Save the Queen " in our ears. We
emerge into the square. The Volksraad is on our
right ; then the Grand Hotel, with all its windows
full of English people, or sympathisers with England,
many of them women, all waving handkerchiefs
and raising a cracked cheer as we pass. I was
staring at all this, whilst a big band on the right
broke merrily out with the ** Washington Post," and

PRETOEIA 137

did not see till I almost brushed his horse's nose,
our Commander-in-Chief standing like an amiable
little statue at the head of all his generals and
their staffs, with finger raised to helmet. It is quite
a moment to remember, and I do really feel for an
instant, what all the morning I have been trying to
feel, that we are what literary people call ** making
history."

As for Pretoria itself, it is a pretty and well-
wooded little place, with pink and white oleander
trees in blossom, fir-trees, * gums, and weeping-
willows along the streams and round the little
bungalow houses. The shady gardens and cool
verandahs give these houses a very inviting air in
this land of blazing sun. They have a comfortable,
and at the same time sociable, look, the houses
being near by each other, but each with a pretty
garden and trees overhanging. Like all the works
of these very practical people, the place is designed
for convenience and comfort and not a bit for
beauty. But the first two give it the last to
some extent, give it a sort of simple and homely
beauty of its own which is pleasing as far as
it goes.

"Take heed to thyself, for the devil is un-
chained." We are told that Christian De Wet is
loose again, and is trifling with our lines of com-
munication. If this is so, our supplies will be cut
off, the army will be starved, and you will never get
this letter. There has been a pretty general hope
that the taking of the capital would mean the end of
the war. *' We have fired our last shot," said some.
At least we counted on a good rest. Alas ! orders

138 WITH RIMINGTON

have just come in. Good-bye flowers and shady
gardens and dreams of bottled beer and a dinner at
the club. We march immediately.

Talking of soldiers, here is a soldier's story for
you —

Officer (to distracted Tommy, fleeing for his life
under shower of bullets) : " Dash you ! what the
dash are you running for ? "

Tommy, tearing on: ** 'Cause I ain't got no
b y wings."

Here's another —

First Tommy : *' And the bullets was comin'
that thick "

Second Tommy : ** Well, but 'adn't you got no
ant'ills ? "

First Tommy: *'Ant'ilIs! Why, there wasn't
ant'ills 'nough for the orficers."

LETTER XIX

THE MARCH SOUTH

Bethlehem, /»/k M, 1900.
Whenever in this campaign we have dealt the
enemy what looked like a crushing blow, he has
always hit back instantly at us. When Methuen
reached the limit of his advance at the M odder
River victory, the Boers were round immediately
threatening us from behind. When we took Bloem-
fontein they at once swarmed round to the east and
south, and dealt us two nasty blows at Sanna's
Post and Reddersberg ; and no sooner had we taken
Pretoria than the same activity was displayed
again.

They threatened us now from two points. Louis
Botha had collected a large force, and was watching
us from the hills east of the town, while the ever-
lasting De Wet, far south, was breaking up the
railway and burning our letters. The first thing we
did, and we did it the very day after entering the
capital, was to march against Botha. Ian Hamilton
has paid our little corps the compliment of tak-
ing it on as his bodyguard. He is a general that
inspires every one under him with great confi-
dence. It is curious, by the way, how very soon
troops get to know the worth of a leader ; just as
a pack of hounds knows by instinct when it is pro-
perly handled. Outsiders may argue about this or

139

140 WITH RIMINGTON

that general, and analyse his tactics, and never very
likely get much nearer the truth (for there is a
monstrous lot of luck one way or the other in all
manoeuvres, and the ones often succeed that didn't
ought to, and vice versa) ; but once you are under
a man, you don't need to argue ; you know. We all
know that Ian Hamilton, with his pleasant well-
bred manner, and the mutilated hand dangling as
he rides, is the best man we have had over us yet,
and we would all do great things to show our
devotion.

The Diamond Hill action was one of those great
big affairs which it would be impossible to explain
without a plan of the country and a lot of little flags.
Our attack from extreme left to right was spread
over a frontage of, I daresay, twenty miles. The
idea was for the mounted troops to turn the enemy's
flanks and let in the infantry in front. Ian Hamil-
ton had to deal with the Boer left flank, French
with the right. Of course we saw and heard
nothing of French, who might as well have been
fighting in another planet, so far as we knew. Our
difficulty here, as on some former occasions, was to
find the limit of their flanks. The more we stretch
out, the more they stretch out. They have the
advantage of being all mounted, while the bulk of
our force is infantry, massed inertly in the middle ;
and also from the lofty position they occupy they
can command a bird s-eye view of the wide valley
across which we are advancing, and perceive the
disposition of our forces, and in what strength we
are threatening the various points of defence, while
their forces are quite concealed from us. This

THE MARCH SOUTH 141

is so much in their favour that, on our flank at
least, it is we, and not they, who are threatened
with being outflanked.

Their position could scarcely have been stronger
if nature had designed it for the purpose. A low
range of hills gives admittance on the west side to
a long wide valley, and on the east side of this a
steep rocky range rises boldly up, showing in the
sky a level outline like a rampart fringed with wall-
like slabs of rock or detached masses, giving excel-
lent cover from shrapnel. But besides this higher
and last line of defence, there are some lower hills
and slopes which project from the main rampart
and command the valley, while they are in turn
commanded by the heights. It is a two-step
position, in fact. You carry the lower step first,
and immediately come under the fire of the upper.
The General told me next day that he thought it as
strange as anything he had seen on the Natal side,
and Winston Churchill set the matter at rest by
pronouncing it stronger in point of formation than
Spion Kop.

In the first day's fighting we drove them from
the western hills and across the valley, which was
more fertile than usual and full of cover, until we
had forced them into the two-step eastern range.
My own work lay right out on the flank end, at the
very finger-tips, where the farthest limit of each force
was trying to feel a way round the other. Here,
with some of the Camerons, we felt about the hills,
shelling them with a couple of guns, for Boer sharp-
shooters, and occasionally flushing one or two. We
were rather detached and out of the main action,

142 WITH RIMINGTON

feeling rather like a gun that has been sent to stop
birds from ''going back" while the main battue is at
work in front. We stayed out all day, and as we
rode in that night to headquarters the whole valley
under the starlight was echoing like a great gallery
and bustling with the multitude of our army arrang-
ing itself and settling down for the night. We
picked our way through the various convoys hurry-
ing forward in search of their brigades, but often
losing their way or getting off the track, checked
by muddy fords, where an engulfed team wallows
piteously, barring the passage. We pass detach-
ments of infantry hurrying in tired and silent, and
meet other detachments with blankets and great-
coats coming out on picket. Waifs and strays,
by ones and twos, who have lost their way, shout
for guidance, hallooing dismally for the brigades
or regiments to which they belong, and which many
have small hope of rejoining that night. Mean-
time, right down the valley and far across it,
the various camp-fires twinkle out like glow-worms.
The air is keen and frosty, and stars, clear and
sharp as icicles, glitter all over the sky. Above
everything is still and calm, very well arranged
evidently, and everything in its proper place.
Below all is confusion, noise, and darkness, dis-
appointment, and difficulty, vague wandering to
and fro, lamentations, and general chaos. They
manage these things better up there! However,
after a bit order begins to reign. The several
units draw together. The camp-fires are beacons.
The waggons struggle up. The bleating of the
lost sheep is gradually hushed, as one by one they

THE MARCH SOUTH 143

find their way to their various folds, and slowly,
in spite of darkness and broken ground, the tangle
is smoothed out.

By a small farm, where the General lodges,
blazes a huge fire. Round it gather some staff
officers, and among them, recognised from afar,
are the welcome tiger-skins of the Guides' officers.
The Major sits by the blaze in that familiar attitude
of his, like a witch in " Macbeth," with a wolf-skin
karross drawn over his shoulders, and the firelight
on his swarthy face as he turns it up with a grim
laugh to chaff the others standing round. But
there is rather a gloom on the party to-night.
News has just come in that poor Airlie, charging
at the head of his Lancers, has been killed. Many
here knew him, and every one who knew him
seems to have been fond of him.

Winston Churchill turns up and enlivens us.
There are several colonels and senior officers squat-
ting about, and Churchill takes the opportunity of
giving them a bit of his mind. He is much
annoyed with the day's proceedings. He has
been a good deal shot at ; so has the Duke, and
so has the General. They have had to use their
Mauser pistols. This sort of thing should not
happen. Then where was French ? Checked,
indeed! a pretty fine thing! And the Guards?
The Guards were somewhere where they had no
business to be, instead of being somewhere else.
Would any one kindly tell him why the Guards
were not somewhere else.^ And Churchill (he
has a face like a good-natured child, and looks
about fourteen) eyes the old colonels, who fidget

■^1^BIP^">'«^'^>S^

144 WITH RIMINGTON

nervously round the fire like disturbed hens. He
talks and argues incessantly, but very cleverly.
Before he goes he dashes off a sketch of South
Africa's future with a few words about fanning and
gold-mining. He gives us a cup of hot cocoa all
round, which he produces from nowhere, like a
conjuring trick, re-arranges our fire, tells us when
the war will be over, and strolls off (daring the
old colonels with his eye to so much as look at
him) to the farm to give the General his final
instructions about to-morrow's action.

Next day our infantry established itself on the
lower step of the Boer position, but the final ridge
still remained in their hands. It was a ding-dong
fight between the two, for the positions were within
half-rifle shot of each other. However, we could
not turn them out, though we got a field-battery
right up in the firing line, which cracked shrapnel
over them as hard as ever it could load and fire.
They had determined to hold that ridge till night
gave them the opportunity of moving off their
waggons and guns safely ; and hold it they did.
No doubt we could have carried it by storm, but
crossing that thousand yards of open ground would
have meant a terrible loss, and the General did not
attempt it. As it was, there was a great deal of
banging and blading, almost like the .old Modder
days, for a time ; guns hard at it, and Mausers and
Lee - Metfords jabbering away at a great rate,
though, as both sides were under cover, the loss
was not heavy. The firing went on till pitch dark,
and we camped close under the ridge we had won.
Next morning we found the ridge vacant, with only

THE MARCH SOUTH 145

heaps of empty cartridge cans and an occasional
blood-stain on the rocks to show where our enemy
had lain.

A little way out from Pretoria there are some
very smart - looking new houses, what they call
''villa residences" in England, built in the style,
a sort of mild and tepid Gothic (what I call grocer s
Gothic, for it always reminds me of brown sugar and
arrowroot), common around watering-places ; small
gables sticking out everywhere, till it looks like a
cluster of dog-kennels ; walls faced with ornamental
tiles and lath and plaster ; small shrubberies round,
and a name on the gate. There were two especially
beautiful ones. The General had one and we had
the other. Ours was quite new. There was no
furniture in it; but this, as we had been so long
without it, we did not miss. But everything we
really needed — gorgeous wall-papers, and dados,
and polished floors, and electric-bells, and stained-
glass windows — was there. We had hot baths at
the Grand Hotel, and we dined at the club, and
we forgot all about the war, and the veldt, and the
dust, and the long marches, and the Boer lurking
in ambush, and the whispering bullet from the hill.
This went on for two days, and then we marched
again, and we have been marching ever since.

We left Pretoria on June 19th, and, taking it
easy, reached Bethlehem on July 9th, doing a bit
under 200 miles in the twenty days. The meaning
of the new scheme begins to dawn on us. Clements
and Paget have come up from the west ; Rundle
is down south-west, near Ficksburg ; the Basuto
border runs up from there south and south-east, and

K

146 WITH RIMINGTON

within the ground thus enclosed we have penned
a very considerable force of the enemy, among
whom is that Jack-in-the-box, Christian De Wet.
We know they are there, and indeed we have little
fights with their scouts every day. The question
is, how are we to collar them ? The country is
very broken and hilly and very extensive.

Hunter is looking after us now. Poor Ian
Hamilton, as you will know, had an accident at
Heidelberg. His horse put a foot in an antbear's
hole, just in front of me as it happened, and came
down, flinging the general forward over his head.
I thought he was killed, he lay so still, but it was
only his collar-bone and a bad shaking. He is in
the field again now.

Hunter has a great reputation as a fighter, which
is rather alarming, especially when we are con-
fronted with such a poisonous country as the one
before us now ; a medley of big mountain ranges,
fantastically heaped, stretching thirty miles south to
Basutoland, and forming part of the great mountain
formation that reaches to and culminates in the
Drakensberg range. These hills are garrisoned by
about 7000 Boers with several guns, and De Wet
to lead them ; altogether a formidable force. There
is a saying, that you should not bite off more than
you can chew. I hope we have not done that
Hunter looks as if he could chew a good lot, I
think. Still the job is likely to be a difficult one to
handle, and if he asks my advice I shall tell him to
leave it to Rundle.

I should think a life of this sort would be likely
to have some permanent effect on one's mind and

THE MARCH SOUTH 147

intellect. The last mail — that is to say, the last
news of any sort of* the outside world — which we
have received was on April 27 th before leaving
Bloemfontein ; three months less a week since any
whisper concerning events or people out of our
immediate sight has reached us. My ignorance of
things in general weighs on me. It is a taste of life
in the dark ages before modern inventions kept one
in touch with the world.

During all this time we have been wandering
like an army in a dream over the unlimited surface
of the veldt The same programme is repeated day
by day. A litde before dawn you hear through
your blanket-folds the first unwelcome *' Saddle up/'
and the muttered curses in reply. You unwind
yourself with groans. A white-frost fog blots out
everything at fifty yards, and a white sugary frost
encrusts the grass. These first hours are piercingly
cold, for it is now mid-winter with us. A cup of
water left overnight is frozen solid. You dress
by simply drawing your revolver-strap over your
shoulder, and flinging your blanket round you, make
your way to where a couple of black boys are
bending over the beginnings of a fire, and to which
several other blanketed and shivering figures are
converging with the same thought — coffee — in every
mind.

Then the great army column^ that has curled
itself up like a caterpillar for the night begins
slowly to uncurl. On the march our huge convoy
stretches out in line, waggon following waggon
along the rude track, and extending to a length of
nearly ten miles. At night, of course, it collects

148 WITH RIMINGTON

(parks is the proper word) at some selected spot

where the ground is favourable, and where in the '

shape of a sluit, river, or farm-dam there is water.

On the slopes and hills around infantry pickets

are set, while the convoy and main camp are

massed in the hollow beneath. You must not

think of our camp in the English sense of the word.

We have no tents. The men sleep tightly rolled

in greatcoat and blanket, stretched on the bare

earth, with saddles for pillows.. If anything takes

you about the camp at night, you might think you

were walking among thick strewn corpses after a

fearful carnage, so stiff and still the frosted bodies

lie on the ground.

Now the great creature wakes for its next crawl.
First its antennae, or long feelers, are pushed out
in front. Its scouts, that is, among which, if you
belong to our corps, you will probably find yourself,
go cantering on ahead. They pass the pickets on
the hill, who promptly shoulder blankets and turn
back to camp, and break into extended order, and
throw out little feelers of their own in front and
to the sides as they enter an unexplored country.
Following them come several companies of infantry,
a block of solid strength, marching at the top of the
column, and a battery or section of guns. Then
comes the long line of convoy waggons, piled high
with provisions, fodder, and kit, strengthened and
protected at intervals by companies of infantry
marching at ease, with the two great cow-guns
somewhere about the middle. The tail of
the column, like the head, is strengthened by a /

considerable force of infantry, followed at an \

THE MAECH SOUTH 149

interval of a mile or so by the mounted rearguard,
which has scattered its scouts far and wide across
the track of the column, and withdraws them
from point to point as we advance. Like-
wise to left and right, far out on the plain, the
horsemen of the flank guards are scattered in
little bands of twos and threes, cantering along or
stopping and spying, sniffing cautiously round kopjes
or peeping into farms, and by- and -by you will
probably hear from one direction or other a few
scattered single shots, and yonder two scouts in the
distance, lately advancing so quietly, are now seen
to be turned and galloping back as hard as they
can split, while two or three Mausers crack at them
from the sky-line.

It is a pretty sight, from some hill far in advance,
to turn back and watch the army coming into view.
You push on, scouts feeling the way, to occupy some
prominent kopje on the line of march, and climbing
up and sitting among the rocks, [command with
your glasses a view far and wide over the plain.
The air has been very cold and sharp, with an
intense penetrating cold hitherto, but now the sun
is shining and its mellow warmth is instantly felt.
The rich pure colour-lines, only seen when the sun,
rising or setting, is low in the sky, lie straightly
ruled across the plain, brown and orange and pale
yellow, and in the distance blue. The ten-mile off
rocks look but a mile in this air. Every object,
distant or near, is exact to the least detail. So
clear are the outlines you would think there was
no atmosphere here at all, and that you might be
looking out over the unaired landscapes of the

I50 WITH RIMINGTON

moon. One would think that such an air would
breed an exceptional race, and that the men, and
horses too, for that matter, of this country would
show something of the Arab character, sensitive,
fiery, and high strung. Yet nothing can be con-
ceived less Arab like than your stolid but practical
Dutchman and the underbred screw he rides.

Left and right of you, your two or three flankers,
half a mile off, have halted, in obedience to your
halting, and are standing by their horses' heads
scanning the country. U nder the kopje your main
body are sitting about, while their ponies, with
bridles thrown over their heads, graze. Far back,
two or three miles, the bits of dark kilt showing be-
hind their khaki aprons, a company of the Camerons
comes into view, the brown colour so exacdy match-
ing the plain that they are first visible only by their
motion. Here come the flank guards, sprinkled
far out over the country. And now, at the point
where the distant kopjes slope to the plain, the air
grows heavy with ^dust- wreaths, rising like steam
from a cauldron, and underneath, slowly emerging,
comes something dark and solid. It is the head
of the column. The great caterpillar is crawling
forward. You must push on — "Stand to your
horses ! "

LETTER XX

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER— I

Camp, near Fouriesberg, July 26, 1900.

We have a whole day of peace and rest before
us — very welcome after the hard fighting we have
been doing lately. This lull is to allow Bruce-
Hamilton and Macdonald to stop the exits at the
eastern end of the valley. We don't want to push
the enemy east till we are sure the passes in that
direction have been secured. Some of us are an-
noyed at the delay. We were in touch with the
enemy this morning, our scouts and advance guard
exchanging shots with their rearguard. We could
see them prancing about on the bare hills east of
Fouriesberg, and making off in a leisurely way up
the eastern valley, and most of us were quite ex-
pecting that we should give chase immediately.

Hunter rode forward to have a look. He
watched the tiny horsemen hovering on the hills
or cantering away ; then back he came with a
quiet smile on his face, and instead of ordering
the advance, as the impetuous ones expected, he
led his column back over the way we had come for
several miles, and then camped.

So here we are, sitting or lying about, sleeping,
smoking, or reading. Our camp is in a small plain,
five or six miles from Fouriesberg, surrounded by
ranges of great hills. Those south and east, their

152 WITH RIMINGTON

gaunt peaks rising, streaked with white, above the
lower and nearer ones, are in Basutoland. They play
an important part in our programme, for it is against
that huge barrier that we are pressing the Boers.
There are some rounded, turf-clad hills, but most
are rocky. Sharp points and stony ridges rise up
with jagged and clear-cut outlines into the sky, with
gorges and valleys retreating in between, full of deep
blue shade, and often horizontal bands of strata, show-
ing like regularly built courses of white masonry along
the flanks of the mountains. It is very fine, though
gaunt, bare, and untenanted.. We have had nothing
but level veldt to march on for weeks past, and the
change to the eye is a pleasant one. Neverthe-
less, it is a bad country for our business. To us
mountain ranges are not fine scenery, but strong
positions ; and rocks and crags are not grand and
picturesque, but merely good cover. We always
serve out extra -ammunition when we come to a
pretty bit of scenery.

The present position is this : We have got the
Boers, a big lot of them, at any rate, into a very
broken and mountainous country, a country which,
though it suits their tactics and is strong for defence,
is nevertheless very difficult to get out of. The
way south is barred by the Basutoland border.
They dare not cross that or they would have the
hordes of Basutos^ who are already buzzing and
humming like a half-roused hive, on to them.
The other passes Hunter occupies in this way :
Rundle comes up from the south-west to Fouries-
berg through Commando Nek. Paget and Clements
march south towards the same point through Slab-

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDEK 153

bert's Nek. A little farther east Hunter himself
forces Reliefs Nek, while farther east still Bruce-
Hamilton, helped by Macdonald, is to hold Naaw-
poort Nek and block the Golden Gate road. The

western columns, i.e. Rundle's, Clement's, Paget's,
and Hunter's, are to force a simultaneous entrance
into the Fouriesberg valley, and having got the
enemy's force jammed against the Bjisuto border, to
force it to turn eastward up the rugged Caledon

154 WITH RIMINGTON

valley, the only two exits to which are, we hope,
by this time held by Bruce- Hamilton and Mac-
donald. This we have now done. Now it
only remains to see whether these eastern exits
have been successfully occupied by our columns
or not

From the moment of leaving Bethlehem, at
which place we remained nearly a fortnight while
the General placed his columns, we entered among
the hills and fighting was continuous. Our passage
to force was Retief s Nek, and, as we had expected,
the Boers made a determined stand there. The
ground lay in a naturally defensive position ; a
narrow plain among steep, almost precipitous, ranges,
and in the plain, arresting further progress, an
abruptly sunken valley, scooped out to a depth of
a couple of hundred feet ; as though, what must
perhaps have happened, some sudden collapse down
below had allowed the ground here to fall in. The
sides are in most places precipitous, but to the north
they shelve up* by degrees in terraces of sloping
rock which a man can easily clamber up. The first
terrace is only a few feet deep, and accordingly a
number of men can form here along the brink and
fire across the plain, being totally concealed from
the advancing troops. Moreover, the edge of this
curious and sudden valley is indented and pierced
with a number of little crevices and fissures in
which riflemen can snugly ensconce themselves
with litde risk of being seen by attackers in front.
This was the main Boer position. You see it de-
parted from the general rule, and instead of occupy-
ing a hill, occupied a hollow. They are past-masters

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER 155

in the art of choosing ground. The adjacent heights
were also held.

On the morning of the 23rd we struck our camp
a few miles north of the Nek, and advanced to find
out whether the enemy were in position here or not.
We started before daylight. The night had been
intensely cold and very wet. On the high mountains
snow had fallen. The sky was heavily clouded,
and about sunrise-time dense masses of mist rose
and clung about the hills, sometimes closing in the
view at fifty yards and then drifting off and leaving
it clear again. Our scouts advanced steadily, re-
connoitring hill after hill and ridge after ridge,
but still there was no sound of firing, and we
began to think that the enemy had abandoned
the place altogether. This preliminary scouting
work, poking about in the hills with a handful of
men to find the enemy, always reminds me of tuft-
ing for deer in the Exmoor woods before the pack
is laid on.

Then there came a few shots from our extreme
right, from the hills on the right of the valley's
nose, sounding very mufHed and dull in the mist,
and we, out on the left, advanced with the more
caution. It was my chance to come upon the
enemy first on this side, and as it will give you
a fair notion of the usual risks of scouting, I will
tell you how it happened.

I was out with my tufters on the left front,
and we were drawing with all possible care the
hills on that side. In front of us was a tall peak,
and I sent a few men to work round it on the
left while I went round the right. This hill really

156 WITH RIMINGTON

overlooked the Boer position. My left flankers
got round and rejoined me in front. Either they
must have been concealed from the Boers by the
mist or have been mistaken for a party of Boers
themselves, for they had passed within a few hun-
dred yards of the edge where the enemy lay and
were not fired at.

Damant, our captain, coolest and bravest of
officers, now joined me, and with two or three
men we pushed cautiously on towards some loose
rocks, which, from the top of the rise, seemed to
command a view of the valley beneath. We had
advanced to within eighty yards of the rocks, in
open order, when we thought we heard voices talk-
ing, and immediately afterwards some one said
loudly in Dutch, "Who rides there?" And then
another voice more to the right exclaimed, " Here
they are!" At the same instant one caught a
motion as of heads and shoulders cuddling down
and adjusting themselves in a disagreeable way.
There they were and no mistake, all tucked in
among the rocks like wood-lice.

Our position then was a curious one, for we
had actually walked quite in the open up to within
speaking distance of the main Boer position, a posi-
tion that was to defy our army for a day and a half.

The ground sloped down in a slight hollow.
It was thickly sprinkled with snow and dotted
here and there with little green spots where the
grass tufts showed through. A wire fence crossed
the hollow lower down. Luckily we heard their
voices before they started shooting, and instantly
we turned and rode for it, the Mausers all opening

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER 157

immediately and the bullets cracking and whistling
round our ears. As bad luck would have it, my
pony, which, like most of them, knows and dreads
the sound of rifles fired at him (though he will
stand close to a battery or among men firing with-
out minding it in the least), became so frantic at
the noise of the bullets that I was quite unable to
steer him. With head wrenched round he bored
away straight down the hill towards the wire. As
we got to it I managed to lift him half round and
we struck it sideways. The shock flung me for-
ward on to his neck, which I clasped with my left
arm and just saved myself falling. For an instant
or two he struggled in the wire, a mark for every
rifle, and then got clear. In his efforts he had got
half through his girths and the saddle was back on
his rump. A pretty spectacle we must have looked,
I sitting back on his tail, my hat in my hand, both
stirrups dangling, and the bullets whistling round
both of us like hailstones. However, I lugged
him out at last, and we went up the side of
the fence broadside on to the shooters, as hard as
ever we could lay legs to the ground. It is a
difficult thing to bring off a crossing shot at that
pace, and in a few hundred yards we were
over the slope and out of shot. I have seen
lots of our men have much narrower escapes than
this.

Well, after all that, we will get back to the
action. Having located the enemy, the Guides all
collected behind the conical hill, climbed up, and
from the edges of it began shooting down into the
Boer position. Here we were joined by the Black

158 WITH RIMINGTON

Watch, who carried on the same game. It was not,
however, at all a paying game, and the fact that the
Boers had not held this hill themselves, though so
close to their position, is sufficient of itself to show
their remarkable skill in choice of ground. For the
hill, conical and regular in shape, was perfectly bare,
and while they behind the sharp ledges and in the
fissures of the rocks below were well concealed
from the men above, these as they crept round the
smooth hillside came into immediate view against
the sky. The sleet of bullets shaving the hill edge
was like the wind whistling past. The Black
Watch lost a lot of men here. In the afternoon the
Guides and some of Lovat's Scouts pushed forward
on the left and gained a low ridge, where, lying
down, we could command a part of the enemy's posi-
tion, and send in a flanking fire. This manoeuvre
was useful and suggested a plan for next day.
That night I had to take out a picket on a hill on
our south-east front and had but a sorry time of it ;
for it was a bitterly cold, rather wet night, and the
position was not without its anxiety. I got little
sleep.

Next morning, July 24, soon after light, the
main body of the Guides and Lovat s Scouts (who
are under Rimington at present) came out, and we
rode down to the slopes on the left of the Boer
valley again. Here we crept up as far as we could
and began to put in our fire. It must have been
very annoying for them, for a part of their position
was quite exposed to us. We could see the short
white cliff^at the edge of the basin and the Boers
moving about and running up and down, diving

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER 159

into fissures and getting under cover, for all the
world like rabbits, as our fire searched the posi-
tion. They replied, but though a lot of bullets were
whistling about, no one was hit There was a
Maxim at the foot of the conical hill rattling away,
and the Black Watch were again on the hill itself,
blazing away at the rocks as vigorously as ever.
Then at last between us and them up gallops a
section of guns, and the little puff balls begin to
burst along the rock edge in a way which we could
see was very disconcerting for the Boers, who were
rapidly finding the place too hot for them. A little
after, some one sings out, " Here comes the attack ! "
and true enough we can make out the little khaki
dots in long loose strings moving forward round the
hill towards the valley head. It is the Seaforths.
We on our side "carry on the motion," dash
forward, lie down and shoot, and on again. We
make for a kopje on our edge of the valley. The
fire is too hot for the Boers to dare to show up
much and there is not much opposition. But I can
assure you that a charge of 1 500 yards, even with-
out the enemy's fire, is a serious thing enough.
Puffing and panting, I struggle on. Long-legged
Colonials go striding by and leave me gasping in
the rear. When at last we reach the kopje and
look down into the sunken valley, the Seaforths
are pouring in their fire on the retreating Boers,
our fellows are doing the same from the kopje
top, but I myself am too pumped out to care
for anything and can only lie on the ground and
gasp.

i6o WITH RIMINGTON

I see in your last letter you want to know about
the character of the Guides, and whether there has
been any cases of treachery among them, I don't
know what started these old yarns. They were
invented about Magersfontein time, probably to
account for that awful mishap, and got into the local
press here and made a lot of fuss, but we have
heard nothing since on that score. There is such a
lot of treachery out here (owing to the intermingling
of English and Dutch in their two territories) that
almost anything in that line seems credible, and there
are numbers of people about, loafers in bars and
fifth-rate boarding-houses, to whom anything base
seems perfectly natural, and who delight in starting
and circulating such tales. At the same time there
are also numbers of honest and loyal men, and it is
from these, and exclusively from these, that the
fighters are drawn. In South Africa, and among
the South Africans, a war of this sort, between
neighbours and cousins, is the sternest test of
loyalty. Many have failed to stand it. But the
loyalty of those who have not wavered, but have
taken up arms for their country in a quarrel like this,
is of a sort you can trust to the utmost extremity.
There are no men in the field who feel so deep an
animosity towards the Boers, and whom the Boers
in their turn hate so much, as the fighting South
African Colonials. As for the Guides, I can assure
you that there has not been a single case of any one
of our men having been accused of treachery, nor
suspected of treachery. I have made careful in-
quiries, lest such a case might have occurred with-

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER i6i

out my knowledge, and I am assured by our adjutant
(C. H. Rankin, Captain 7th Hussars) that there
has been no such case, and that the slander was
without the slightest foundation whatever.

Shortly after Magersfontein the greater part of
the Guides turned back to Colesberg, leaving fifteen
of us with Methuen, the services of the whole corps
not being required, as Methuen's force was now
stationary. Before it left, Methuen paraded the
corps and spoke in the warmest terms of the good
work it had done. Nevertheless it was their turning
back, or being sent back^ as it was called, that gave
a pretext to the slander that was then started.
Later, when his attention was called to the story,
Methuen wrote to the Cape Times a most emphatic
letter vindicating the corps from the least suspicion,
and indignantly denying that the least cause for
any had existed. Lord Roberts himself, who came
up soon afterwards, wrote a very handsome and
decisive letter to the same paper, and since then I
don't think we have heard anything about it. The
whole story is so ridiculous, considering the way
the Guides hate the Boers, and the danger of the
services they do, that to any one who knows any-
thing about the corps it is a tale rather to be laughed
at than seriously resented. I saw the other day
a letter from Hunter to Rimington, in which the
General speaks of the corps with a kind of weighty
deliberation that is very satisfactory, mentioning
emphatically its '* trustworthiness," its " bravery,"
and its ''exceptional and proved value in the
field."

Our casualty list so far is about forty per cent.,

L

1 62 WITH RIMINGTON

I believe ; but this loss, though not light, does not
in a Colonial corps give an adequate idea of the
service done. All the Colonials, so far as I know
(the Australians and South Africans certainly), have
much the same qualities that make our enemies so
formidable. They have individual intelligence and
skill, a faculty for observation, and the habit of
thinking for themselves. They are therefore able
to take care of themselves in a way which our
regular troops, mostly town-bred men, without
independent training, cannot do.

The difference comes out chiefly in* scouting,
including all the flanking and advance guard busi-
ness, extending for several miles to left and right,
and in front and rear of an army column, by which
that column feels its way through an enemy's
country. The regulars usually carry out these
tactics in long lines with wide intervals between
the men. But nothing is so conspicuous as a
long line of men riding at fifty yards* interval.
They can be detected a dozen miles off, and plenty
of opportunities will occur for a mobile, cunning
enemy like the Boers to lie in ambush and get a
shot at the outsider. Our regulars are better at this
game than they used to be, but many lives have
been lost at it. On the other hand. Colonials adopt
more the tactics of a Scotch gillie in a deer forest,
whose object is to see, but not to be seen. Sky-lines
are avoided and cover taken every advantage of.
From places where a good view is to be obtained
the country is intently studied ; not by a horseman
poised in relief like the Achilles statue in Hyde Park,
but by a man who has left his horse on the reverse

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER 163

slope and lies hidden among the rocks with his
glass. Again, if a farm or suspicious-looking kopje
has to be approached, this is partly encircled, and
threatened or examined in flank or rear before
being occupied ; while if the place, a long range of
hills for instance, has to be approached in front, a
sudden left or right wheel at long range may often
draw the enemy's fire. These are a few of the
many expedients that sometimes suggest themselves
to lessen risk. In all, the first necessity is personal
intelligence in the men and the habit of taking
notice and thinking for themselves, faculties which
the independent, self-reliant life of the Colonials
has greatly developed. Just the same holds good
when it comes to shooting; choosing cover, keep-
ing oneself hidden, creeping on from point to point
without giving the enemy a fair shot, or detecting
the probable bushes or rocks behind which an enemy
may be lying, or any sign of his whereabouts. The
Tommy as he advances is apt to expose himself, be-
cause he doesn't think. The Colonial will get to the
same spot perhaps quite unperceived. This is why
I say that our loss does not give an adequate idea
of the work done by the corps. The defence of the
conical hill here at Retief s Nek is a good example.
Our men hold the hill for several hours before the
regulars come up, and lose one man. As soon as
the regulars arrive (though by this time the ex-
posed places are known and the enemy located),
they begin to lose men, and by the conclusion of
the action have lost, I am told, over forty. I think,
and have often spoken so highly of our soldiers*
courage, that I don't hesitate to point out their

164 WITH RIMINGTON

weakness. They are lacking in personal intelli-
gence. For all their pluck, they don't know how
to look after themselves. There have been, as
you will have heard, many cases in which detached
parties of our cavalry, mounted infantry, and
yeomanry have been cut off and captured. How
often has this happened to the Colonials ?

LETTER XXI

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER— II

August 4M.

We have been up the valley and back again, and

I write this once more from Fouriesberg. We

passed through here, joining Rundle, as I told you

a week ago, and pushed on eastward in the

direction of Naawpoort Nek and the Golden Gate.

Six miles out from here, passing through a very

rugged country, we came on their outposts. These

we shelled and drove back. They then retired to

some hills not very high, but with perpendicular

sides of low white cliffs commanding the approach

across the plain. These they held till nightfall.

We shelled them a good deal and knocked out the

only gun they had, and the infantry pushed forward

in front and we took a hill on the right, but the

attack was not pressed home, as it would have cost

too many lives. The infantry took the hill during

the night, but found it evacuated, the Boers having

retired as soon as it got dark.

We did not know all this time how things had

gone with Macdonald and Bruce- Hamilton, and

whether or not they had been able to block the

eastern exits. On this everything depended. So

it was with a feeling of the most gleeful satisfaction

that we heard next morning, having followed the

Boers up some two or three miles without seeing

165

i66 WITH RIMINGTON

anything of them, the deep, heavy baying of a big
gun in the distance, which we all recognised as the
voice of one of the 5-inch cow-guns that had gone
with Bruce- Hamilton. It fired a few shots and then
ceased. With infinite toil, forty oxen to each gun,
we then dragged our own two 5-inchers up the hill
we were on, and got them into position for shelling
the defiles ahead. They were not, however, needed.
Messengers now began to arrive from the Boer
laagers carrying white flags. There was a lot of
palaver. These went, others came. Le Gallais,
our chief of the staff, interviewed them, while
Hunter strolled a little way apart, dreamily admiring
the view. It was evident the Boer envoys were
sticking out for terms which they couldn't get. I
could see Le Gallais indicate the surroundings with
summary gestures. The Boers looked very glum.
They eyed the cow-guns especially with profound
disgust. These were looking particularly ridiculous.
The nose of one of them projected in the direction
of those secret Boer-tenanted defiles as if the great
creature were sniffing for its enemies in the dis-
tance ; which gave it a very truculent and threaten-
ing air, as who should say, " Come now, Le Gallais,
old fellow, suppose you let me put a word in," while
the other, hanging its head till its nose touched the
very ground, seemed overcome, poor wretch, with a
sudden fit of bashfulness, most absurd in so huge
and warlike a monster. The Boers looked from
them to Le Gallais and from Le Gallais to them,
but there was no more hope from one than the
other, and at last they realised that there was
nothing for it but to surrender, and surrender was

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER 167

agreed to. We could scarcely believe our good
fortune. At Paardeberg we caught 4000, but we
used 50,000, more or less, to do it, and we lost
about 1500 doing it. Here we trapped as many or
more, composed of some of the best commandoes
of the Free State, caught them, too, in a wild
mountainous country such as you would think was
almost impregnable. We used 15,000 to do it,
and we lost, I suppose, not 200 altogether. Also,
we have taken enormous quantities of horses, oxen,
and waggons, which will come in very useful.

It seems to me that Hunter deserves the utmost
credit that can be given to him. We have had
plenty of generals who have done direct fighting
and done it well ; but, with the doubtful exception
of Paardeberg, we have had no triumph of tactics.
We have never scored off the Boers, never made
a big capture, or cut them up, or taken guns or
transport, or bested them in any decisive way by
superior strategy till now. This has always been
our lament. We have always said, '* Why, with all
these armies in the field, cannot we surround them,
or catch them, or deal a decisive blow of some sort ? "
But hitherto we have never succeeded in bringing
off such a coup. We have pushed them before us,
losing as many or more than they at every shift,
but, whenever we have thought to get a hold of
them, they have always eluded us. You may think
it is a strange thing that they have been caught this
time. The daring of Hunter s plan and the rapidity
it was carried out with made it succeed. The Boers
— so they tell me at least — never believed that we
should venture with so small a force to penetrate

i68 WITH RIMINGTON

by four or five different routes into such a strong
country. The scheme seemed to lay us open to a
disaster if the enemy had rapidly concentrated and
flung itself on one of the separated forces- This
danger, however, was more apparent than real,
because the ground manoeuvred over was not alto-
gether of very large extent, so that relief might be
sent from one column to another, or the enemy, if
concentrated against one column, rapidly followed up
by one or more of the others. Besides which, if the
country offered strong positions to take, it offered
strong ones to hold, and in a very short time any
threatened column could have placed itself in such
a position as to make it impossible for the Boers to
shift it in the time at their disposal. Still the plan,
considering the Boers' skill in defending strong
positions, had an audacious look about it. Several
of the Boer prisoners have since told me — I don't
know with what truth — that they thought we should
follow them in by the Retief Nek pass, and that it
was their intention to work round and threaten our
communications, and either cut us off or force us to
fight our way out as best we could.

The quickness of our advance, too, was of the
utmost importance. From the moment we started,
the enemy was given no opportunity to pull him-
self together and look about him. Hunter, Paget,
Clements, and Rundle dashed into the Fouriesberg
Valley exactly together. Directly we had got
through. Hunter detached the main part of his
column, the Highland Brigade, under Macdonald,
and sent it with several guns as hard as it could pelt
to back up Bruce- Hamilton, knowing, now that we

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER 169

had carried our end of the valley, that the pressure
would come at the east end. Meantime, while
Macdonald marched, we waited. We even retreated
two or three miles, and for twenty-four hours lay
on the pass and slept. Then we got up and began
sauntering up the big irregular valley along the
Basutoland border towards Naawpoort Nek.

It was a moment of infinite expectation. Bets
were laid on the amount of our bag. The general
impression was that we should get some of them,
but that the main body would, somehow or other,
escape. We had so often toiled and taken nothing,
that this sudden miraculous draught quite flabber-
gasted us. And what must have been the feelings
of the poor Boers ? They tried Naawpoort Nek :
no exit. They knocked at the Golden Gate : it was
locked. Then back they turned and met Hunter
sauntering up the valley, and we gave them the
time of day with our cow-guns, and told them how
glad we were to see them. ''Fancy meeting you,
of all people in the world ! " And so they chucked
it. It was a complete checkmate.

The surrender occupied the next three days ;
our total bag 4100, I am told. I wish you could
have been there. It was a memorable sight among
those uninhabited and lonely mountains. The
heights of Basutoland, ridge behind ridge, to right
of us ; the tops snow streaked ; groups of excited
Basutos riding about in the plains, watching our
movements ; to left the great mountain chain we had
fought our way through ; and in the midst spread
over the wide saddle-backed hill, that slopes away
north-eastward, and breaks up in a throng of sharp

I70 WITH RIMINGTON

peaks and a jumble of inaccessible-looking hills in
the direction of the Golden Gate, is drawn up the
dirty, ragged, healthy, sun-scorched British army
with greasy rifles in its blackened hands, watching
imperturbably and without much interest, the parties
of Boers, and waggons, and droves of cattle as they
come meandering in. Each Boer, as he rides
up, hands over his rifle, or more often flings it
angrily on the ground, and the armourers set to
work, smashing them all across an anvil. Rather
a waste of good weapons it seemed, I must say.
Many of the Boers were quite boys, about fourteen
or fifteen. They are much better looking than you
would think from the men. The men are big and
well built, but they look, for the most part, stupid
and loutish, and when this is not so, their expression
is more often cunning than intelligent. The amount
of hair about their face, too, and their indifference
to washing, does not improve their appearance.
However, in the boy stage, and before the dulness
of their surrounding has had time to tell, they are
quite different, frank-faced and manly, with clear
skin, tall and well grown, like young larches. It does
seem strange that such mere children should be in
the field against us. What would you think of
giving Puckie a rifle and sending him out to fight ?
Boer prisoners have told me that the courage of
these boys could be relied on; they were often
braver, and would stick to a position they had been
placed in longer than the men. They showed traces
of the experience they had been through, though.
Not only in being deeply tanned and more or less
ragged and thin, but by an unmistakable expres-

PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER 171

sion (in many instances) in their faces and in their
eyes ; a dilated look, as of one who sees something
appalling before him, and braces himself to face it
out Considering what it is to be exposed to
lyddite and shrapnel fire (the absolute hell of din
and concussion besides rain of bullets), one doesn't
wonder that it leaves marks on young faces.

R. and I rode eastward through the hills in
the Golden Gate direction, meeting parties of
Boers, waggons, Cape-carts, &c., coming straggling
in. It reminded me of the road to Epsom on a
Derby morning. There is some pleasure in meet-
ing Boers on these terms. '* Good morning. How
are you? A pleasant morning for a ride, is it
not ? " " Good morning, sir ; it is fine now, but I
think we shall have rain later." That's what I
like. There's nothing like a little urbanity.

Towards the end of a long valley we come
to some signs of defensive work that interest us.
The Boers evidently expected to be able to await
our advance here before they found their retreat
was cut off. They have thrown up some shelters.
We noticed from afar off several very conspicuous
stone sangars, but coming close, we were surprised
to find that they were made of stones loosely put
together with big chinks, very flimsy and frail,
and much too high for their purpose, too. They
evidently were not intended for shelters at all.
What were they there for? We looked carefully
round, and at last the meaning of the device struck
us. A hundred yards to the right the ground
dropped sharp, leaving an edge ; here was the real
position and the natural cover. We walked over,

172 WITH RIMINGTON

and found the usual little hollows and inconspicuous
stones arranged Here was where their riflemen
had lain, with a view right up the valley. And
the meaning of those conspicuous edifices was now
plain. Stuck up on the bare brow, plain to be
seen at 2000 yards, they were simply meant to
draw our fire. The smokeless Mausers would
have told no tales, and I have no doubt that, if
the attack had come off, the device would have
more or less succeeded, for the stone shelters,
though obviously dummies on close inspection,
looked all right at a distance. Besides, a definite
mark always attracts fire. It was characteristic
of Boer cuteness.

LETTER XXII

FIGHTING AND TREKKING

Heilbron, August 17.

We stayed several days among the mountains on
the scene of the surrender, collecting our prisoners
and the waggons, guns, horses, &c., and sending
them off to the railway. The valley, viewed
from the hill where we were camped, looked much
like one of our West Country horse fairs on
a very large scale. The separate commandoes
were herded together in big groups of several
hundred men, sitting and lying about and talking.
The ox-waggons and battered Cape-carts were
drawn up together in a great array ; but the
busiest part of it all was the division of the
horses into mobs fit or unfit for remounts, and
the distribution of them to the various regiments.
Rimington superintended this job. Of course,
after all our marching, we were sadly in want
of remounts. The Boers had any number of
horses, many of them bringing in two or three
apiece, and the majority were in good condition
and fit for work, probably owing to the fact that
the grazing all about this side of the Free State,
especially among these mountains, is excellent.
The South African ponies, I may tell you, are
the only satisfactory mounts for South Africa.
We have tried horses from all parts of the world

174 WITH RIMINGTON

now, and they can none of them stand the climate,
work, and food like the native breeds. The South
African pony, wretched little brute as he looks,
will tripple and amble on, week after week and
month after month, with a heavy man on his back,
and nothing to eat but the pickings of souf,
dried-up veldt grass and an occasional handful of
Indian com; and though you will eye him with
an eye of scorn, no doubt (if he should happen
to be allotted to your use), and envy some other
man his fat Burmese or Argentine, yet by-and-
by you will find out your mistake ; for the fat Bur-
mese and the Argentine, and all the other imported
breeds, will gradually languish and fade away, and
droop and die, worn down by the unremitting work
and the bad, insufficient food ; but your ragged
little South African will still amble on, still hump
himself for his saddle in the morning, and still,
whenever you dismount, poke about for roots and
fibres of withered grass as tough as himself, or
make an occasional hearty meal off the straw cover-
ings of a case of whisky bottles. With an action
that gives the least possible exertion ; with the
digestion of an ostrich, and the eye of a pariah
dog for any stray morsel of food ; with an extra- '
ordinary capacity for taking rest in snatches, and
recouping himself by a roll whenever you take
his saddle off; and of course, from the natural
toughness of his constitution, too, he is able to
stand the long and gradual strain of being many
hours under the saddle every day (and perhaps
part of the night, too) in a way that unaccustomed
horses cannot do. By this time we all know his

FIGHTING AND TREKKING 175

merits, and there is immense demand from every
mounted corps for the Boer ponies. The Major
is up to his eyes in work, as officers and order-
lies come galloping up with requisitions from the
various regiments. He has the born horse lovers
dislike for parting with a really good horse ex-
cept to a man he knows something about. Loud
and uproarious is the chaff and protestations (now
dropping to confidential mutterings) as the herds
of horses are broken up and the various lots as-
signed. As I say, it looks from the hilltop exactly
like a west country fair on an enlarged scale, and
the great lonely Basuto mountains, too, might
seem a larger edition of the Exmoor hills around
Winsford. The Boer prisoners, poor fellows, have
no eye for the picturesque. They congregate to-
gether and grumble and watch the distribution of
their horses with a very sour expression.

From this point we sent our prisoners in, vtd
Winberg, to the railway, the Major and most of the
corps going with them as part of the escort ; while
I with twenty men, consisting partly of Guides
and partly of Lovat s Scouts, was detached to
continue as bodyguard to Hunter. He, with the
main column (we reunited at Bethlehem), marched
to Lindley and then here to Heilbron.

It was ten miles south of this that we came
in contact with Olivier. Olivier and De Wet had
both broken through our cordon at different times
and escaped from the hills. Sent one morning
with a message to the Sussex outside Slabbert's
Nek I saw shells bursting, and all the appearance
of a heavy fight going on over the hills to the

176 WITH RIMINGTON

north-west This was Christian De Wet, who with
several guns and about 1500 well-mounted men,
had made a dash for freedom when he found the
place was getting too hot, and had been promptly
tackled by Broadwood when he got outside. Pur-
suer and pursued vanished into the blue distance
of the veldt, battering each other as they went,
like birds that fight and fly at the same time.
Broadwood, however, had got hold of his enemy
by the wrong end. What happened exactly we
don't know, but De Wet got clear somehow, and
immediately turned his attention to his beloved
railway line, which he never can tear himself away
from for more than a few days at a time. He is
now, I should imagine, in the very seventh
heaven of delight, having torn up miles of it, be-
sides capturing several trains.

De Wet is getting an immense reputation.
The rapidity of his movements is extraordinary.
He always has two or three of our columns after
him ; sometimes half-a-dozen. Among these he
wings his way like a fowl of some different breed,
a hawk among owls. Some amusement was caused
by the report in orders the other day that De Wet
had marched north pursued " by various generals ; "
as if two or three, more or less, didn't matter, as
indeed it didn't. Of course, mere fast marching
would not always extricate him, but he shows such
marvellous coolness and common sense in the way
in which he doubles. Several times he has been
reported surrounded ; but each time when we came
to look he had disappeared. It is like a conjuring
trick. He seems to have an intuitive knowledge

FIGHTING AND TREKKING 177

of the plans of our generals, and to divine how
any movements of his will modify theirs. He
makes a swift march. This he knows will set
in motion a certain column. Night comes and
back he steals, and dashes out through the gap
left without any one being the wiser. He never
loses his sangfroid, but acts always, in the most
hopeless positions, with equal craft and rapidity.
In short, like the prophet Isaiah, he is '^capable
de tout.*' For he can hit hard, too. I think since
the arrival of the main army he is the only man
who has scored off us at all freely. Sanna's Post
and Reddersburg came first ; then, last May, came
the capture of the 500 Yeomanry at Lindley ; that
was followed immediately by the surprise of the
Heilbron convoy and all its escort ; then came
the capture of the Derbyshire Militia, and a few
days later the taking of Roodeval with a train of
mails and various details. Even when he had
bolted out the other day between our legs, and was
flying north with two or three cavalry brigades after
him, he found time to snap up a hundred Welsh
Fusiliers and break the line as he passed. He is,
they say, extremely amusing, and keeps his men
always in a good temper with his jests ; the other day,
after one of his many train captures, he sent a mes-
sage to the base to say that "he was sufficiently
supplied with stores now, and would they kindly
send up some remounts." He is now the only
prize left worth taking, and every one is desperately
keen in his pursuit. I notice, however, that people
never seem to meet him when they want to, though
when they don't want to, they very often do.

M

178 WITH RIMINGTON

Olivier, with a force about equal to De Wet,
also broke out from the hills, and having reached
the open country, hung about to watch our move-
ments. There are some kopjes ten miles south
of Heilbron, very nicely arranged, with a back hill
commanding a front one, so that the first position
gained would only bring us under the fire of the
second ; a very favourite Boer trick. Here Olivier
awaited our coming, and, knowing the range to
an inch, landed his first shell plump in the middle
of our convoy. Hunter, and we with him (it is
certainly great fun being with the Staff for the time
being), were at the head of the column, and heard
the shell go over. Never have I seen a better
shot. It exploded on the track, right underneath
a great waggon, to the amazement and consterna-
tion of the Kaffir drivers and the wretched oxen ;
though they were all, I believe, a good deal more
frightened than hurt. Three or four more quickly
followed. " Roll that up," said Le Gallais to the
Guide carrying the General's flag. A few minutes
passed, during which we were shot at without being
able to reply. Then two Field Batteries came
galloping to the front. Guns! Guns! Way for
the guns ! like the fire-engines down Piccadilly they
came tearing along. As the iron wheels strike
upon rocks the guns leap and swing. Stones and
splinters fly right and left, and the dust flung
up by wheel and hoof boils along their course.
Nothing is more stirring than to see guns coming
full speed into action. In another minute they
have lined up on the ridge and their shells are
bursting on the enemy's hill.

FIGHTING AND TREKKING 179

Hector Macdonald is a man who always amuses
me. Ordinarily he is a somewhat grim-looking
individual ; but when there is any fighting going
on his whole manner changes, and he beams and
mantles with a sort of suppressed mirth. He comes
swaggering up now as the guns are opening, look-
ing like a man who has just been told the best
story he ever heard in his life, and is still chuckling
over it. "They're on to us again," he bubbles
out, knocking his boot with his whip in irrepressible
glee. ** What ! what ! they're on to us again." He
looks round at us and grins, and seems to lick his
lips as a shell goes howling overhead and bursts
behind us. His merits as a general are very much
discussed, but there is one thing he does thoi*oughly
enjoy, more than any man I know, and that is
being shot at. I suppose he would rather win a
battle than lose one, but I am sure he would rather
lose one than not fight at all.

Next to him, in marked contrast to his excite-
ment, stands out the cool attentive face of "Archie "
Hunter ; the most popular officer, as I believe one
might call him, of all the British army. He is noted
chiefly as a fighter and for his dash and gallantry.
He did all the fighting in the Egyptian campaign.
During the siege of Ladysmith it was he who planned
and led the night attack which blew up the big Boer
gun. When I was coming out on the steamer the
one question asked among the war correspondents,
who wanted to be where the most fighting was
going on, was " Where will Hunter be ? " But it
is probably his kindness and the deep interest he
feels in all his men that makes him so universally

i8o WITH RIMINGTON

popular. Here is a tiny instance, perhaps not
worth mentioning. We were halted on the march
for a moment, sitting about and smoking, when the
General gave the word to mount, and one of the
orderlies, a trooper of the Lancers, jumped up in a
hurry and left his pipe behind him. Hunter saw
the filthy, precious object lying on the ground, and
put it in his own pocket. At the next halt he went
up to the trooper, and with that manner of his of
deliberate kindness, returned it to him. A mere
nothing, of course, but very characteristic.

He has a way of looking at you, no matter
who you are. Tommy or officer or what not, with
a wonderfully kind expression, as if he felt the
most friendly interest in you. And so he does ; it
is not a bit put on. He does not seem to think
about himself, but about the people and things
round him. Every morning he finds time to stop
and ask after the horses and men of our little
body, and to exchange a word with one or two
of the men whom he has had occasion to notice.
Not a grain of condescension is there in him ; not
even a thought that he is giving them pleasure.
It is a natural impulse with him, the result of the
real regard and interest he feels in every soldier
that marches under him. In action his manner,
always calm, is just as calm as at any other time.
He says little ; observing the most important de-
velopments or listening to the reports of orderlies
from various parts of the field, more often than
not without any comment at all. Yet nothing
escapes him.

Our action with Olivier is a rather stupid one,

FIGHTING AND TREKKING i8i

and I shall not attempt to describe it. We take
the first position, losing from forty to fifty men,
only to find that the enemy have retired to the
second range, and that it is too late to follow them
up. Probably the only man at all satisfied with
the day s performance is old Mac.

Through a weary land we have come marching
north these ten days. The veldt is at its worst,
parched and dry and dead. Our column trekking
raises a huge cloud of reddish dust that hangs still
in the air, and marks for miles back the way we
have come. The whole expanse is quite colourless
— ^almost white, or a dirty grey. All day long the
blue sky is unvaried, and the sun glares down
unobscured by a cloud ; sky and earth emphasising
each other's dull monotony. Only at sunrise and
late evening some richer and purer lines of colour
lie across the distant plain, and the air is fresh and
keen. Round about the town, which, like all these
Boer towns, stuck down in the middle of the veldt,
reminds one of some moonstruck flotilla becalmed
on a distant sea, the grass is all worn and eaten
to the very dust. Whiffs of horrid smell from dead
carcases of horses and cattle taint the air. All
the water consists of a feeble stream, stagnant now
and reduced to a line of muddy pools, some re-
served for horses, some for washing, and some for
drinking, but all of the same mud colour.

And yet even for this country, I think it with
a kind of dull surprise as I look out over the naked
hideousness of the land, men can be found to fight.
What is it to be a child of the veldt, and never to
have known any other life except the life of these

1 82 WITH RIMINGTON

plains ? It is to reproduce in your own nature the
main features of this extraordinary scenery. Here is
a life of absolute monotony, a landscape, huge, and
on a grand scale, but dull and unvaried, and quite
destitute of any kind of interest, of any noteworthy
detail, of any feature that excites attention and
remark. And the people, its children, are like unto
it Their minds are as blank, as totally devoid
of culture and of ideas as the plains around them.
They have an infinite capacity for existing without
doing anything or thinking anything; in a state
of physical and mental inertia that would drive
an Englishman mad. A Boer farmer, sitting on
his stoep, large and strong, but absolutely lethargic,
is the very incarnation of the spirit of the veldt.
At the same time, when one remembers the clatter
and gabble of our civilisation, it is impossible to
deny him a certain dignity, though it may be only
the dignity of cattle.

The problem will apparently be, when we have
burnt these people out or shot them, and in various
ways annexed a good deal of the land they now
live on, how are we to replace them ? What strikes
one is that time and the country, acting on the
naturally phlegmatic Dutch character, has produced
a type exactly suited to this life and these surround-
ings. And it does seem in many ways a pity to
destroy this type unless you have something to
take its place. Except in one or two very limited
areas, accessible to markets, and where there is
a water supply, no English colonist would care to
settle in this country. The Canadians and Aus-
tralians, many of whom volunteered, and came

FIGHTING AND TREKKING 183

here with the view of having a look at the land
and perhaps settling, are, I hear, unanimous in
condemning it. Indeed, it does not require any
great knowledge of agriculture to see that a country
like this, a lofty table-land, dry and barren, with
no market handy, or chance of irrigation, is a
wretched poor farming country. Hence the pity
it seems of wiping out the burghers. They may
not be a very lofty type of humanity, but they
had the advantage in nature's scheme of filling a
niche which no one else, when they are turned
out, will care to fill in their place. The old dead-
alive farm, the sunny stoep, the few flocks and
herds and wandering horses sparsely scattered over
the barren plain, the huge ox-waggon, most charac-
teristic and intimate of their possessions, part tent
and part conveyance, formed for the slow but sure
navigation of these solitudes, and reminding one
a great deal of the rough but seaworthy smacks
and luggers of our coasts, that somehow seem in
their rudeness and efficiency to stand for the very
character of a whole life, all these things are no
doubt infinitely dear to the Boer farmer, and make
up for him the only life possible, but I don't think
it would be a possible life for any one else. It
seems inevitable that large numbers of farms, owing
to death of owners, war indemnity claims, bank-
ruptcy, and utter ruin of present holders, &c., will
fall into the hands of our Government when the
war is over, and these will be especially the poorer
farms. But yet probably as years pass they will
tend to lapse once more into Dutch hands, for it
is difficult to believe that men of our race will ever

1 84 WITH RIMINGTON

submit to such a life of absolute stagnation. In
dealing with the future of the country, it will always
be a point that will have to be borne in mind, that
the natural conditions of life outside the towns are
such as favour the Dutch character very much more
than they do the English.

.J

LETTER XXIII

WRITTEN FROM HOSPITAL

Hospital, Kronstadt,
September 6, 190a

It is only a bad attack of influenza. I lie here
in a dim, brown Holland coloured twilight. A
large marquee of double folded canvas keeps out
the sun ; a few shafts of light twinkle through
here and there. Through three entrance gaps I
catch glimpses, crossed by a web of tent ropes,
of other surrounding tents, each neatly enclosed
by a border of whitened stones, the purpose of
which is to prevent people at night from tripping
over the ropes. Everything is scrupulously neat
and clean. Orderlies run from tent to tent minding
their patients. Every now and then a pretty little
nursing sister, with white cuffs and scarlet pelisse,
trips across the open spaces between the straight
lines of marquees, or stops to have a moment's chat
and a little quiet bit of a flirt (they can always find
time for that, I notice) with one of the officers or
doctors. I watch with faint interest and a feeling
of vague recollection. She looks up sideways and
shades the sun off her eyes with her fingers. They
keep it up still then !

Some way off, among the Tommies' quarters,
I can see groups of patients in clean, dark-blue

clothes walking about, or sitting on seats, taking

28s

186 WITH RIMINGTON

the air; some hobbling on crutches, some with
arms in slings, heads bandaged, or patched and
mended in some way or other. You feel like some
damaged implement tossed aside a moment for re-
pair. "Mend me this lieutenant!" The doctors
get to work, deft and quick ; a little strengthening,
repairing, polishing, and out you are shot again.

It has been the only glimpse of absolute peace
and rest I have had this eleven months. Every
one is kind and sympathetic ; a cool breeze blows
through the looped-up tents ; it is all very luxurious
and pleasant for wearied-out soldiers. I like to lie
and watch the little pictures through the tent open-
ings of low blue veldt hills in the distance (which
somehow remind one of the background glimpses
in old Italian pictures), and dream over things one
has seen and done, many of which seem already
such ages ago, and listen to the bugle calls that
sound at intervals in the camp. I have managed
to buy some pyjamas. Probably you would see
something very ludicrous in the way in which, after
an elaborate hot-bath and hair-cutting, dressed out
in one's clean pyjamas and lying between clean
sheets, one rolls one's eyes with unutterable com-
placency on one's surroundings. All our comforts
are attended to. We have a shell-proof shelter in
a ravine close by, handy in case of visits from De
Wet; and the two great cow-guns, like guardian
angels, doze on the top of the hill behind the
hospital. Under the shadow of their wing I always
feel perfectly safe.

From patients who come in daily from various
parts of the country and various columns we get a

WRITTEN FROM HOSPITAL 187

general impression of how things are going. The
army seems to be adopting very severe measures to
try and end the campaign out of hand, and the
papers at home are loudly calling for such measures,
I see, and justifying them. Nevertheless, it is
childish to pretend that it is a crime in the Boers
to continue fighting, or that they have done any-
thing to disentitle them to the usages of civilised
warfare. The various columns that are now march-
ing about the country are carrying on the work of
destruction pretty indiscriminately, and we have
burnt and destroyed by now many scores of farms.
Ruin, with great hardship and want, which may
ultimately border on starvation, must be the result to
many families. These measures are not likely, I am
afraid, to conduce much to the united South Africa
we talk so much of and thought we were fighting for.
I had to go myself the other day, at the General's
bidding, to burn a farm near the line of march. We
got to the place, and I gave the inmates, three
women and some children, ten minutes to clear
their clothes and things out of the house, and my
men then fetched bundles of straw and we pro-
ceeded to burn it down. The old grandmother was
very angry. She told me that, though I was
making a fine blaze now, it was nothing compared
to the flames that I myself should be consumed in
hereafter. Most of them, however, were too miser-
able to curse. The women cried and the children
stood by holding on to them and looking with large
frightened eyes at the burning house. They won't
forget that sight, I'll bet a sovereign, not even when
they grow up. We rode away and left them, a

1 88 WITH RIMINGTON

forlorn little group, standing among their household
goods — ^bedsi furniture, and gimcracks strewn about
the veldt ; the crackling of the fire in their ears, and
smoke and flame streaming overhead. The worst
moment is when you first come to the house. The
people thought we had called for refreshments, and
one of the women went to get milk. Then we had
to tell them that we had come to bum the place
down. I simply didn't know which way to look.
One of the women's husbands had been killed at
Magersfontein. There were others, men and boys,
away fighting ; whether dead or alive they did not
know.

I give you this as a sample of what is going
on pretty generally. Our troops are everywhere
at work burning and laying waste, and enormous
reserves of famine and misery are being laid up for
these countries in the future.

How far do you mean to go in this ? Are you
going to burn down every house, and turn the whole
country into a desert ? I don't think it can be done.
You can't carry out the Cromwellian method in the
nineteenth century. Too many people know what is
going on, and consciences are too tender. On the
other hand, nothing is so disastrous as that method
half carried out. We can't exterminate the Dutch
or seriously reduce their numbers. We can do
enough to make hatred of England and thirst for
revenge the first duty of every Dutchman, and we
can't effectively reduce the numbers of the men who
will carry that duty out Of course it is not a ques-
tion of the war only. It is a question of governing
the country afterwards.

WRITTEN FROM HOSPITAL 189

So far we only really hold the ground on
which our armies stand. If I were to walk out
from this tent a mile or two over the hills yonder, I
should probably be shot Kronstadt has been ours
for four months. It is on the main railway. The
country all round is being repeatedly crossed by
our troops. Yet an Englishman would not be safe
for a minute out of range of those guns on the hill.

There is a delightful feeling of spring in the air.
We have had some warm, heavy rains lately. The
veldt grass, till now dry and dusty and almost white,
is beginning to push up tiny green blades, and the
green colour is beginning to spread almost im-
perceptibly over the distant hills. I begin to feel
a sort of kindred impulse in myself. The old
lethargy, bred of the dull, monotonous marches
over the dreary plains, is passing, and I begin to
cock an attentive eye at the signs of awakening,
and feel that I am waking up myself. If you could
see the view from here, the barren expanse of veldt
stretching miles away, the cluster of tin roofs and
the few leafless thorn-trees beyond, I have no doubt
you would laugh at this fancy of a spring day.
And yet I am sure I can feel it ; there is a change
in the air. It has grown elastic and feels alive, and
there is a smell in it to my mind of earth and vege-
tables. Yesterday, when I toddled in as far as the
village, I saw a little fruit tree in a garden that
carried white starry blossoms at the ends of its
black twigs. It gave me quite a thrill. Oh, to be

in England now that April Dear me ! I was

forgetting 'tis autumn, and partridges and stubble
fields with yoa

I90 WITH RIMINGTON

The Hospital Commission of Inquiry has just
turned up here, very dignified and grand in a train
of half-a-dozen saloon carriages, which must be a
great nuisance on the overworked lines. I have
had several talks with the R.A.M.C. officers and
men here about the alleged neglect and deficien-
cies, especially with the second in command, a very
candid, liberal-minded man. He quite admits
the shortcomings. The service is under - manned.
There are not enough medical officers and not
enough orderlies. This hospital, for instance, is
entitled to a full colonel and two lieutenant-colonels,
instead of which it has only one lieutenant-colonel,
and the same proportion is preserved in the lower
grades. Men in all departments are stinted, and
the hospitals are all seriously short-handed. They
have done their best to make up the deficiency with
volunteers and civilian doctors and surgeons, but it
is only partly made up. Their numbers compare
very unfavourably with the numbers allotted to
other nations' hospitals in the field. This has all
been represented to the War Office many times of
late years without result.

At the same time, with the men and accommo-
dation they had, the hospitals have done their ut-
most. In the base hospitals there was nothing to
complain of. At Bloemfontein there was great
suffering owing to lack of medical staff, surgeons,
nurses, orderlies, &c., and also owing to the lack
of necessary supplies and medical comforts. For
the shortness of the staff the War Office is of course
responsible, and as blaming the War Office hurts
nobody, I dare say the Commission will come down

WKITTEN FKOM HOSPITAL 191

on it severely. For the shortness of supplies, this
was due to the working of our line of communica-
tion, which considered the efficiency of the army
a great deal, and the lives of the sick very little.
But here you come to individuals, and the matter
craves careful handling.

It is no fun fighting for you people at home,
because you don't know when to clap. The Eng-
lish papers' account of Prinsloo's surrender have
just come in. By Jupiter, for all the notice you
take of it, it might be the capture of a Boer picket
and a dozen men. Here have we been marching
and fighting and freezing and sweating and climbing
up great Alpine mountains in the snow for weeks,
and captured 4000 great ugly live Boers and all
their guns and baggage, and by the god of war,
you hardly take the trouble to say thank you.
This sort of thing will just suit Hunter, because his
idea of bliss is to do the work and run the risk, and
then somehow to evade the praise. But he ought
not to be allowed to evade it. It is true we had
no war correspondents with us, but I should have
thought the bare facts would have spoken for them-
selves. It was the first thing of the war and our
one really big score off the Boers. However, I
shall not discuss it any more. I am disgusted with
you. Mafeking day is about your form.

LETTER XXIV

FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING

Frankfort, November 23, 1900.

Frankfort is one of our small garrison towns. It
exists in a perpetual state of siege, like Heilbron,
Lindley, Ladybrand, Winberg, Bethlehem, and a
dozen others in this neighbourhood ; in fact, like
all the towns held by us not on the railway. At
intervals of a month or two a column comes along
bringing supplies and news from the outside world ;
mails, papers, parcels, clothes and kit, great quanti-
ties of regular rations, ammunition, &c., &c. You
can imagine how eagerly the little garrison, stranded
for months in this aching desolation, looks for the
column's coming. Then arise other questions.
Sometimes a part of the garrison is relieved and
receives orders to join the column, while some of the
troops forming the column are left behind in their
place. Of course every one in the town is longing
to get away, and every one in the column is dread-
ing having to stay, and there is an interval of
ghastly expectation while contradictory rumours go
hurtling from village to camp and back again ; and
men look at each other like cannibals, every one
hoping the doom will fall on some one else. We in
our corps are spared all this anxiety, and can lie
on our backs and look on and condole with the

unlucky ones. We never get left anywhere.

193

FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING 193

For the last few weeks we have been cruising
about over the veldt from one little British fort
to another with our huge fleet of waggons, doling
out supplies. During this time we have been
fighting more or less, I think, every day. Perhaps
you would hardly call it fighting ; long-range sniping
the greater part of it. Out of our 250 mounted men
we have had some half-dozen casualties only, and we
have accounted for a dozen or so of the enemy and
a few prisoners. They have the advantage of their
intimate knowledge of the country. We have the
advantage of a pompom and two 15-pounders.
These are invaluable in keeping the Boers at
a respectful distance. It is rather satisfactory to
plump some shrapnel on to a group of waiting,
watching Boers three miles off, who are just con-
cocting in their sinful hearts some scheme for
getting a shot at you ; or to lay a necklace
of exploding pompom shells among some rocks
where you guess they are hiding. "There, my
boys, take that, and I hope you enjoy it," I feel
inclined to say. You will understand that the side
that has no guns at this game is apt to look rather
silly. Rimington has -initiated an entirely new use
for guns. They are used now with the Scouts.
Instead of remaining with the column, where they
would never be of the slightest use, he takes them
right out to the limits of his flankers or advance
or rear guard, or wherever there is most need of
them. So that when these scattered skirmishers
get engaged, as they are constantly doing, instead
of having to extricate themselves as they best can
from an awkward corner, and being followed up and

N

194 WITH RIMINGTON

hampered and pressed as they keep up with the
column^ they know that in about two minutes they
will hear the voice of one of the 15 -pounders
or the indignant pompom speaking on their
behalf, and that the pressure will be immediately
relieved. I am sure that the use made of these
guns has saved us a number of casualties, besides
inflicting loss on the enemy. It isn't very orthodox,
I fancy, and I have noticed officers of the column
rather stare sometimes at the sight of these volatile
guns of ours careering away in the distance, but
with the Colonel this is only another re&son for
using them so. At the same time the pertinacity
of these Dutchmen is really remarkable, and the
instant the guns limber up, on they come, darting
round corners and creeping upon us with a zeal
that never seems to diminish.

The work falls chiefly on front and rear guards,
but perhaps mainly on the rear, as the difficulty of
retiring is usually greater than advancing; i.e., if
the advance guard gets pressed, all they have to do
is to sit tight and the natural advance of the column
will bring them up supports. But when the rear
guard gets engaged, the advance of the main
column tends to leave it stranded ; it is bound to
keep on retiring to avoid this, and retiring under
fire is a difficult and dangerous job. The Boers,
who have an instinctive knowledge how to make
themselves most disagreeable, of course know all
about this susceptibility of a rearguard, and there
are always sure to be a number of them sniffing
about in that direction. "Where are you to-
day?" "Rearguard." "Oh! Good-bye, then!''

FIGHTING AND FAEM-BURNING 195

was the farewell given to a rearguard officer this
morning.

On the other hand, the advance is of course
the most exciting. You make a dash for a kopje,
probably uncertain if it is held or not. The cluck-
ing of the old Mausers at long range warns you
that it is, and a few bullets kick the dust up. The
squadron swing to the right to flank the kopje, and
the fire gets hotter and the whistle of bullets sharper
and closer. Suddenly the welcome report of a gun,
followed by a second one, sounds behind you, and
next instant the rush of the quick-coming shells is
heard overhead. Then the squadron goes head-
long for the kopje. The ponies tear along, mad
with excitement, their hoofs thundering on the hard
ground. The men grip their loaded carbines with
their right hands ; not one that won't be first if he
can. There go the shells ! There is a little shout
of approval ; one bursts right among the rocks on
the top of the kopje in a puff of white smoke ; the
other half-way down, raising a great cloud of dust.
The Mauser fire ceases as if by magic, and the next
instant the racing squadron has reached the rise.
Down jump the riders and clamber up over the
stones. Yonder the enemy go, bundling along a
rough track not 500 yards away, half seen through
whirling dust. The men fling themselves down,
some tearing a handful of cartridges from their
bandoliers to have handy, and settle their carbines
on the rocks. Crack ! goes the first shot, and at the
sound, as at a signal, the covey of fleeing Boers
shakes out and scatters over the veldt. The fire
quickens rapidly as the carbines come into action.

196 WITH RIMINGTON

Every Boer as he rides off, you can see through the
glasses, is pursued and attended by little dust tufts
that tell where the bullets strike. Surely they can't
be going to get off scot-free. " Take your time,
men ; now do take your tttne^*^ insists our captain.
•* A thousand yards, and aim well ahead ! " And
now at last it is seen with glee that something is
the matter with the man on the white horse.
Horse is it, or man } Both apparently. The man
seems to be lying on his horse's neck, and the horse
has lapsed into a walk. Instantly two of his com-
rades have turned to him. One begins thrashing
the horse with his rifle into a canter. The other
seems to be holding the rider in the saddle. Every
carbine is on to them. Another Boer jumps off
and lies down, and the report of his rifle reaches us
at the same instant that a bullet whistles overhead.
No one attends to him. Every man is blazing
away at the little slow moving group of three, a
good mark even at this distance. But it is not to
be ; though the dust spots are all round them, hit
them we can't ; and at last as they move away in
the distance, the last reluctant shot is fired, and we
give it up. On this particular occasion we capture
one of the Boers a little further on hidden in a farm
garden, his horse having been shot, though we did
not notice it. This accounts for two anyway, which
is about what we expect, and we proceed good-
naturedly to help the farm people out with some of
their furniture before burning the house down.

I am writing this lying on my back in our tiny
tent. Outside the sun is blazing. Across the river,
on the edge of the hill, our picket, under the lee of

FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING 197

a kraal wall, is shooting at intervals. It sounds as
if some one in the distance were chopping wood.
The Colonel and DriscoU are standing just outside
watching through their glasses. They can make
out Boer scouts on the horizon, but no one pays
much attention.

DriscoU, of DriscoUs Scouts, is a thick-set, sinewy
man, rather short than tall. He is of an absolute
sooty blackness. Hair and moustache coal-black,
and complexion so scorched and swarthy that at
a little distance you might almost take him for a
nigger. There is about his face a look of un-
mistakable determination amounting to ferocity in
moments of excitement. He looks and is a born
fighter, but is apt to be over headlong in action.
His scouts are part of our 250 mounted men under
Rimington.

As for the Colonel I don't know if I have ever
tried to describe him to you. He is a man who
invites description. Of all the men in the army
he is the one you would single out to sketch. An
artist would be at him at once. He is the living
image of what one imagines Brian de Bois Guilbert
to have been. An inch or two over six feet high,
his figure, spare but lengthy and muscular, has been
so knocked about (by hunting and polo accidents)
that it has rather a lopsided look, and he leans
slightly to one side as he walks, but this does not
interfere with his strength and activity nor detract
from the distinguished and particularly graceful look
of the man. His face, like DriscolFs, is sun-blackened
rather than sun-browned ; its general expression
stern and grim, and when he is thinking and talking

198 WITH RIMINGTON

about the Boers (he talks about them just as Bois
Guilbert did about the Saracens) this expression
deepens into something positively savage, and he
looks, and can perhaps sometimes be, a relentless
enemy* But this is only half the man. In ordinary
talk he is quite different He has the Celtic sensi-
tiveness and humour. He is an artist His manner
among friends is extraordinarily winning and sympa-
thetic, and his grave melancholy face has a way of
breaking into a most infectious laugh. Altogether,
what with his tall person, dark determined face, his
fierceness and gentleness, and the general air of the
devil about him, you are not surprised to find that
no soldier's name is more common in men's mouths
out here than Mike Rimington's. You might fit
Marmion's lines to him well enough —

** His square-tunied joints and length of limb
Show him no carpet knight so trim.
But in close fight a warrior grim."

He ought to have lived five hundred years ago and
dressed in chain-mail and led out his lances to
plunder and foray. As it is he does his best even
in the nineteenth century. Picturesque is the word
that best describes him. He makes every one else
look hopelessly commonplace. His men admire
him immensely, like him a good deal, and fear him
a little. Generals in command sometimes find him,
I fancy, a bit of a handful, that is, if their policy is
at all a backward one. But most people watch him
and talk of him with a certain interest, and what-
ever their opinions or ideas of him may be, one
feels sure that none who have once met will easily
forget him.

FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING 199

He is essentially a man who means business,
who believes that the army is here to fight, and it
is especially in action that he makes his value felt.
Then, when he leads his squadron and the rifles
begin to speak, and the first few shots come one by
one like the first drops of a shower, and when he
turns round in his saddle and thunders his, ^' Let
them go " down the ranks, then I tell you there is
not a trooper at his heels who does not realise that
the man at their head is the right man in the right
place.

At the same time it would be a mistake to think
of him as one of our ** let me get at them," all sword
and spurs officers. There have been several of
this sort in the army, and it is impossible to help
very often admiring their dash. But they are most
dangerous leaders. What chiefly distinguishes the
Boers is their coolness. You cannot bluff or flurry
them, or shift them by the impetuosity of your
attack from a position which they are strong
enough to hold. If indeed you have reason to
believe them weak, then the faster you go at them
the better : for if they mean going this will force
them to go in a hurry and you will diminish the
time you are under fire. But see your calculations
are pretty sound, for if they don't mean bolting it
will not be the fury of your charge that will make
them. Generally when they begin on you at a very
long range it is safe to go for them ; but if they
reserve their fire then look out for squalls. The
Colonel has a very cool judgment in these matters ;
and though no one, when he does go for them,
goes straighter and faster than he, no one, on the

200 WITH RIMINGTON

other hand, calculates more coolly the probable effect
and consequence of the move*

In all scouting operations in our frequent long
patrols he shows the same mixture of prudence
and daring. He goes long distances from his
supports and penetrates far into the enemy's
country, and yet in none of these expeditions
has he ever got trapped or cut off. Of course
with men like the Guides, who have experience
of the country and the enemy, and ways of picking
up information not open to strangers, this is easier
than it would be with men who had no such
experience ; but at the same time the chief credit
and responsibility in these affairs must rest with the
commanding officer. For one thing Rimington
has an extraordinary good eye for a country.
Perhaps at first you will scarcely realise the value
of this gift. The features of this country and
the way the long, undulating slopes of the veldt
merge into each other are extremely perplexing,
and as an engagement may be carried on over
many miles of ground and your own movements
may be extensive and involved, it becomes very
difficult, in fact to most people absolutely im-
possible, to remember the lie of the land and how
the various hills and slopes are related to each
other. Thinking about it and trying to observe
does no good at all ; but some people have an
extraordinary instinct by which they hold the
configuration of the ground mapped in their
head ; judging not by slow calculation and an effort
of the memory, but intuitively and at once. This
instinct is called "an eye for a country," and is

FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING 201

a most valuable gift Personally, I am very ill
equipped with it, which makes me the more inclined
perhaps to admire it in others. It is developed in
the Colonel to an extraordinary degree, and is one
of the chief means by which, however hard beset,
he has always been able, so far, to find a way out.
Most nearly of any of our officers his tactics in
daring and in craft resemble the tactics of that
prince of scouting officers, Christian De Wet.

Kronstadt, Lindley, Heilbron, Frankfort, has
been our round so far. We now turn westward
along the south of the Vaal. Farm burning goes
merrily on, and our course through the country is
marked as in prehistoric ages, by pillars of smoke
by day and fire by night. We usually burn from
six to a dozen farms a day ; these being about all
that in this sparsely-inhabited country we encounter.
I do not gather that any special reason or cause is
alleged or proved against the farms burnt. If Boers
have used the farm ; if the owner is on commando ;
if the line within a certain distance has been blown
up ; or even if there are Boers in the neighbour-
hood who persist in fighting — ^these are some of the
reasons. Of course the people living in the farms
have no say in these matters, and are quite powerless
to interfere with the plans of the fighting Boers.
Anyway we find that one reason or other generally
covers pretty nearly every farm we come to, and
so to save trouble we burn the lot without inquiry ;
unless, indeed, which sometimes happens, some
names are given in before marching in the morning
of farms to be spared.

The men belonging to the farm are always

202 WITH RIMINGTON

away and only the women left Of these there
are often three or four generations ; grandmother,
mother, and family of girls. The boys over thirteen
or fourteen are usually fighting with their papas.
The people are disconcertingly like English, espe-
cially the girls and children — fair and big and
healthy looking. These folk we invite out on to
the veldt or into the little garden in front, where
they huddle together in their cotton frocks and big
cotton sun-bonnets, while our men set fire to the
house. Sometimes they entreat that it may be
spared, and once or twice in an agony of rage they
have invoked curses on our heads. But this is
quite the exception. As a rule they make no sign,
and simply look on and say nothing. One young
woman in a farm yesterday, which I think she had
not started life long in, went into a fit of hysterics
when she saw the flames breaking out, and finally
fainted away.

I wish I had my camera. Unfortunately it got
damaged, and I have not been able to take any
photographs. These farms would make a good
subject. They are dry and burn well. The fire
bursts out of windows and doors with a loud roaring,
and black volumes of smoke roll overhead. Stand-
ing round are a dozen or two of men holding horses.
The women, in a little group, cling together, com-
forting each other or hiding their faces in each
others laps. In the background a number of
Tommies are seen chasing poultry, flinging stones,
and throwing themselves prostrate on maimed
chickens and ducks, whose melancholy squawks
fill the air. Further ofi* still, herds and flocks and

FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING 203

horses are being collected and driven off, while, on
the top of the nearest high ground, a party of men,
rifles in hand, guard against a surprise from the
enemy, a few of whom can generally be seen in the
distance watching the destruction of their homes.

One hears the women talk. Their ideas about
the war are peculiar, for they all maintain that they
will succeed in the long-run in asserting their inde-
pendence, and seem to think that things are going
quite satisfactorily for them. '' Of course we shall
go on fighting," they say, quite with surprise.
" How long ? " " Oh, as long as may be necessary.
Till you go away." It is curious coming to house-
hold after household and finding the whole lot of
them, women and children, so unanimous, so agreed
in the spirit in which they face their afflictions.
Husbands and sons in the hill fighting. Homes
in the valley blazing, and they sitting and watching
it all, almost always with the same fortitude, the
same patience, and the same resolve. I am im-
pressed, for I have never seen anything of the sort
before. It is not often in these days that you see
one big, simple, primitive instinct, like love of
country, acting on a whole people at once. Many
of our officers, the thoughtful and candid-minded
ones, do these people justice ; but many don't.
Many catch at any explanation but the true one,
and attribute every kind of motive save the only
one that will explain the facts. They refuse to call
the Boers patriots, but that the Boers are prepared
to face a slow extermination in defence of their
country is now evident. It has become more evident
since the war has assumed its present character of

ao4 WITH RIMINGTON

individual, personal effort I much respect and
admire them for it

It is time to bring this long letter to an end. I
wish I could see an end to the campaign. When I
come home **an old, old, aged and infirm old man,"
I mean to pass the evening of my days in a quiet
cottage with its full allowance of honeysuckle and
roses. There I shall grow sweet williams and, if I
can stand the extra excitement, perhaps keep a pig.
They tell me the Times has pronounced the war
over. I would be glad to pay £^ out of my own
pocket to have the man who wrote that out here on
the veldt with us for a week. We have just heard
that Dewetsdorp has fallen, and that there is a
rising in the Colony near Aliwal North. Vogue la
galire I

LETTER XXV

THE SITUATION

Camp on the Vaal,

NEAR KLERKSDORP,

December 23, 190a

We are encamped close to the Vaal, which is here
a fine stream, as wide as the Thames at Richmond.
I have just been bathing in it. It is early morning,
and I am sitting under a thicket of great weeping
willows by the river. The banks slope down and
make a trough for the stream a good deal below the
level of the plain, and in this hollow, hidden till you
are close to it, congregates all the verdure there is
for miles, especially a quantity of willow trees, with
gnarled black trunks leaning down to the stream,
sometimes bending over and burying themselves
in the ground and then shooting up again, making
arches and long vistas, with green grass below and
silvery foliage waving above. After our long
marches on the veldt, the contrast here is wonder-
fully refreshing. One seems to drink in the coolness
and greenness of the scene with eyes that have
grown thirsty for such things. The trees strad-
dling down the bank are rather like figures of men,
giants that have flung themselves down, resting on
hands and elbows, delighted, one would think, as I
am, to come and rest near water again.

I can hardly believe that it only wants two days
to Christmas. Our last Christmas we spent on the

ao5

ao6 WITH RIMINGTON

Modder. I remember it well ; a wet night, and all
night long we sat on a steep kopje watching the
lights of a Boer laager and expecting to be attacked.
Methuen's little campaign strikes one now as a
sort of prelude, or overture, to the main show ; but
how very much surprised we should have been
that November morning when we marched from
Orange River Camp if you had told us we should
ever be looked at in that light. Ten thousand
men was a big army in those days.

We have been on the trek now for about six
weeks with Bruce- Hamilton, and though we have
not so far been seriously engaged, there has been
almost daily fighting round the fringes and skirts
of the column ("skirt-fighting," you may call it).

''November 17. — Left Lindley. This neigh-
bourhood quite as disturbed as ever. Shooting.

''November 18. — More shooting. Boers in all
hills.

"November 19. — More shooting and galloping
about Reached Heilbron.

" November 20. — Left for Frankfort Boers in
attendance as usual. Our two guns and pompom
very useful."

Those were the last entries I made in my
diary. The day's events became too monotonous
to chronicle, but very much the same sort of entries
would have applied to almost every day since.
Sometimes there are exciting incidents. Yester-
day half-a-dozen Boers hid in a little hollow which
just concealed them until our column came along,
and opened fire at close range on the flank guard.
One or two men were hit and several horses. My

THE SITUATION 207

friend Vice had five bullets through his horse and
was not touched himself, which was rather lucky
for him (or unlucky for the horse). A few days
before that we were camped on the river and had
a picket on the other side. Two or three Boers
crept up the river right between our picket and
the main body, and then walked straight to the
picket as if coming from us and fired into it at
point-blank range. They mortally wounded one
of our men and in the dusk escaped. They are
as cunning as Indians. Sometimes, as in these
cases, they show great coolness and daring, while
at others they are easily dispersed; but they are
generally pretty keen, and you have to be very
much on the alert in dealing with them.

You at home will probably be annoyed to find
the war dragging on so. About election time the
papers were announcing that it was over. It had
been a hard job, they said, but it was finished at
last. A good deal was occurring out here which
did not quite tally with that theory, but those
things were ignored or very slightly referred to,
so that we on the spot wondered to see the war
drop out of sight, and were puzzled to read in the
Times that only a few desperadoes remained in the
field just at the time that two commandoes were
invading the Colony, another raiding Natal, a
garrison and two guns captured at Dewetsdorp,
and the line blown up in ten different places. The
continuance of the war must strike you as a re-
newal, but there was never a lull really.

People who think the war can be ended by
farm-burning, &c., mistake the Boer temper. I

2o8 WITH RIMINGTON

scarcely know how to convey to you any idea of
the spirit of determination that exists among them
all, women and even children as well as men. The
other day I picked up at a farmhouse a short
characteristic form of prayer, written out evidently
by the wife in a child's copybook, ending thus :
** Forgive me all my sins for the sake of your Son
Jesus Christ, in whom I put all my trust for days
of sorrow and pain. And bring back my dear
husband and child and brothers, and give us our
land back again, which we paid for with blood from
the beginning." Simple enough as you see, and
no particular cant about it, but very much in
earnest. At another farm a small girl interrupted
her preparation for departure to play indignantly
their national anthem at us on an old piano. We
were carting the people off. It was raining hard
and blowing — a miserable, hurried home-leaving;
ransacked house, muddy soldiers, a distracted mother
saving one or two trifles and pushing along her
children to the ox-waggon outside, and this poor
little wretch in the midst of it all pulling herself
together to strum a final defiance. One smiled,
but it was rather dramatic all the same, and exactly
like a picture. These are straws, but one could
multiply them with incidents from every farm we
go to. Their talk is invariably, and without so
far a single exception, to the same effect — "We
will never give in, and God sooner or later will see
us through."

And then I see a speech of Buller's explaining
that the war is being carried on by a few mercenaries
and coerced men, and that it is in no sense a

THE SITUATION 209

patriotic war. He is emphatic on this point and
his audience cheer him. One realises the difficulty
of getting you to understand. The breaking up
of the big commandoes and the change to guerilla
tactics, in which every man fights on his own ac-
count, shows in a way there is no mistaking that it
is the personal wish of each man to fight out the
quarrel to the last. It is just because they are so
individually keen that this sort of warfare of theirs
is so hard to cope with. These men are uncoerced.
Spontaneously and one by one they turn out to
fight us as soon as we show ourselves in their
neighbourhood, and all the suffering we can inflict
only serves to harden their resolution.

Yet we certainly inflict a great deal. Boer
families usually average up to a dozen. They
stick together, and grow up on their farms, which
are of enormous extent, and which they get to love
with the instinctive force of people who have never
seen any other place. Love of family and love of
home are their two ruling affections. The house-
hold life of a big family on a 20,000 acre farm
— three and often four generations represented — is
usually uninterrupted for weeks at a time by the
sight of a strange face or a bit of outside news.
Their lives are altogether bound up, in their serene
and stolid way, with each other and with their
homes. Anything that breaks up a family is felt
by them more grievously than would be the case
with most people; and, in the same way, anything
that severs them from "the land" would be more
profoundly felt too. It amounts to an entire dis-
location of their ideas of life.

aio WITH RIMINGTON

This must make the war at present very hard to
bear. ** My dear husband and child and brothers "
are away fighting. One or two of them very likely
killed by this time, or in Ceylon or St. Helena.
*'And as for the others who are still in the field,
we are in constant terror of hearing the bad news,
which we know, if the war continues, must some
day come." So the family is quite broken up, and
now the home is being destroyed and the occupants
carried off, so that altogether the chances of ever
renewing the old life again in the old place seem
very remote indeed.

All this should be enough to break Boer hearts,
and there is no doubt they feel it very much. I
can recall many scenes and incidents which show
that — scenes which, if you saw them out of your
peaceful, natural life, you would perhaps be never
able to forget. But yet, in spite of all they have
to suffer, their determination remains just the same.
Anything like loud lamentations or complaints are
almost unheard. They rise to the occasion, and
though naturally a very simple people, who express
openly what they feel, they act now in this crisis with
a constant composure which I have often thought
most remarkable.

What supports them and keeps them going is
just that spirit of patriotism which Buller denies the
existence of. A patriot is a man who puts his
country first thing of all. The final result of it all,
**the uselessness of prolonging the struggle," and
such newspaper talk as that, is not for him. There
fronts him one fact, his country is invaded ; and
there fronts him one duty, to fight till he dies for

THE SITUATION 211

it. This would have been a Greek's definition of
the word, and it is the Boer farmer's definition.
It is of course just because patriots never do
count the cost, and are what the newspapers call
**deaf to reason," that they sometimes bring off
such astonishing results.

The Boers have now to watch a slow, implac-
able, methodical devastation of their country, tract
by tract. Day by day they fight, and one by one
they fall. Comrades and friends drop at each
other's sides ; sons drop by fathers, and brothers
by brothers. The smoke rises in the valley, and
the home is blotted out. All that makes life worth
living goes, then life itself. What sterner test can a
nation be put to than this ? It is a torture long and
slow ; the agony and bloody sweat. I know well
that if my own country were invaded I should, or
hope I should, behave exactly as these men are
doing ; and as I should call it patriotism in my own
case, I cannot refuse to call it the same in theirs.
You see bribery and coercion are not adequate
motives, and do not explain the facts ; only, unfor-
tunately, a lot of people would rather hunt up any
base motive, however inadequate, than take the
obvious one if it did their enemy any credit.

It is most important that the situation should
be realised at home, for if it were the conduct of
the war would be changed. You cannot torture
and terrorise men like this into submission. Pro-
bably no system will end the war off quickly, but
certainly kind, or at least fair, treatment is the
best chance and best policy in every way. The
present system hardens these men's resolution to

Ill WITH RIMINGTON

iron, and so tends to prolong the war ; and it
embitters Dutch hatred of the British, and so tends
to perpetuate the ill effects of the war. In fact,
I am convinced that it is the worst policy you could
possibly adopt, and the sooner you change it the
better.

As for the fighting itself, you must make great
allowance for our difficulties. So long as we had
big commandoes with guns, convoys, &c., to deal
with, there was a definite object to hit at. It was
possible to deal a blow that took effect. Now we
are fighting shadows. Our columns march through
the country and see no enemy, or at most only a
few small parties hovering on the sky-line. Scouts
and patrols are often engaged, and no one can
wander out of sight of the column but the ugly
voice of a Mauser will warn him back. Invisible eyes
watch us all the time, ready to take advantage of
detached parties or unprotected convoys. We are
teased and annoyed, but never definitely engaged.
We are like the traveller and the gnats —

'' Nor could my weak arm disperse
The host of insects gathered round my head,
And ever with me as I walked along."

Carried on in a country like this, where a man on
horseback is like a bird in the air, and by people
so individually keen as the Boers, the present kind
of war may go on indefinitely. After all, it is the
sort of war the Boers understand best. The big-
battle war is a matter of science which he had in t
a great measure to be instructed in, but this is a |
war which the natural independence of his own

THE SITUATION 213

character and self-reliant habits make natural to
him. The war, now that it has become a matter
of individuals, is exciting all its old enthusiasm
again, and the Burghers are up in arms in every
district in the country. Fighting in their own
country, the Boers have one advantage over us,
which is their salvation : they can disperse in
flight, but we cannot disperse in pursuit.

This vagrant form of war is more formidable
than it sounds. These wandering bands can
unite with great rapidity and deal when least ex-
pected a rapid blow. As we cannot catch them we
must be prepared to receive them at all points.
The veldt is a void to us, all darkness, and it hides
a threat which, as it may fall anywhere, must be
guarded against everywhere. This, what with all
our garrisons and enormous lines of communication,
means that the far greater part of our army has to
act on the defensive ; to sit still waiting for an enemy
who may be a hundred miles off or behind the next
hill. As for our wandering columns, they have about
as much chance of catching Boers on the veldt as
a Lord Mayor's procession would have of catching
a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. The enemy
are watching us now from a rise a few miles away,
waiting for our next move, and probably discussing
some devilry or other they are up to. The line of
our march is blotted out already. Where we camp
one day they camp the next. They are all round
and about us like water round a ship, parting before
our bows and reuniting round our stern. Our pas-
sage makes no impression and leaves no visible
trace. It does amuse me to read the speeches and

ai4 WITH RIMINGTON

papers in England with their talk of what we are
to do with the country now we have conquered it.
•• With the conclusion of the war in 'South Africa
arises the question/' &Cm &c It reminds one of a
child's game of make-believe. There is the same
pompous air of reality '' This is the shop and you
are the shopwoman. Good morning, Mrs. Snooks,
I have come to buy a pound of sugar." Unfor-
tunately the facts remain. I find that some of the
shrewdest onlookers out here are just beginning
to feel a sort of half doubt whether we shair ever
conquer the country at all. It depends on whether
the home Government and press give up their
babyish " let s pretend " attitude and face the diffi-
culties of the situation.

All this is very sad and lugubrious, is it not?
and I daresay you think me a croaker; but there
is a melancholy satisfaction in trying to^ see things
as they are, and I believe what I have told you is
nearer the truth than what you get from the papers.
I only hope I may turn out to be wrong.

I add a note (January 12th) from Ventersberg,
where we' have just arrived. This has been our
last trek, we -believe. Rimington takes command
of his regiment, and the corps, like the rest of the
Colonial Division, will be paid off. I have a vision
of a great blue steamer with a bow like a cliff
bursting her way through the seas on her home-
ward voyage. And yet I can scarcely believe it.

Bad news waits us here. They say the Colony
is risittg. Now mark my words. If we don't watch
it, we shall end by bringing about the very state
of things we have been dreading. There will be

THE SITUATION 215

a Dutch South African conspiracy, but it will be
one of our own making. We shall have our own
treatment of these people to thank for it. Be sure
of this, that for every house up here that is destroyed,
three or four in the south are slowly rousing to
arms.

You will think, I daresay, that I have been
putting the case one-sidedly. Possibly that is so ;
but I am putting the side that wants putting. I
am constantly seeing it stated that any measures are
justifiable so long as they are likely to end the war.
** Well, but we must end it somehow," is a common
phrase. That is all rubbish. We must fight fairly,
that's the first rule of all. I daresay there may
have been individual acts of cruelty or treachery on
the part of the Boers, but I am sure that any just
and unprejudiced officer will tell you that on the
whole they have behaved surprisingly well, and in a
way that is really very striking when we consider
how undisciplined and individually independent
they are. Let us then, on our side, play the game
fairly. No doubt it is very exasperating to have
the thing dragging on in the way it is doing, and
the present intangible, elusive warfare is desperately
irritating, but there is after all nothing unfair about
these tactics of the Boers, nothing illegitimate in
any way ; they are merely the turning to account
of natural advantages ; and this being the case, we
have no right to lose our tempers and get vicious
just because we have taken on a tougher job than
we thought for. Unluckily there seems to be a big
party who are prepared to do anything and fight
anyhow to get the thing finished. You will gain

2i6 WITH RIMINGTON

nothing by those means. You will not hasten the
end of the war, and you will make its after effects
more lasting and hard to deal with.^

^ Here is a telegram copied from the Evening Standard of
October 1 6, 1901. '* Addressing the volunteers who have returned
from the front, the Governor of Natal this morning said that he
could not now refer to the Boers as dogs of war, but rather as yelping,
snarling curs." As against that take the opinion of Lord Cranbome
who has just come back from the front : '' They had fought and they
were fighting with some of the bravest, some of the most tenacious,
and some of the most admirable troops that the nation had ever had
to encounter ; '' and he ends his speech : *' Personally he had, as one
who had served as a soldier in South Africa, a great admiration for
the Boers themselves.'' What I submit is, that it makes the whole
difference to your chances of a settlement whether you speak of
and regard your enemy as brave and admirable, or as a yelping cur.
We shall have to settle down with these people sooner or later,
and every paltry insult uttered and countenanced against them only
makes the process much more difficult. The odd thing is that even
in England they seem to excite no surprise or dissent. They are
printed as a natural comment on the situation. What I always feel is,
now as when I was out there, that the chances of a future agreement
would be very much improved if the English people were to treat
the Boers in the way that brave enemies ought to be treated, with a
certain amount of courtesy and respect.

the
xts

LETTER XXVI

PLAIN MISTER!

Caps Town.
I AM trying to din the fact into my head that I
am a civilian again and not a soldier any more.
It is difficult. I find myself looking questioningly
at my suit of grey flannel. It feels like a disguise.
No soldiers' hands as I pass them rise in salute now,
though my own involuntarily half rises in answer.
They look at me and take no notice. A recruiting
sergeant tried to induce me this morning to join
an irregular corps. He told me I should get five
shillings a day, and that it was a fine life and a
beautiful country.

And yet I know that, in a few days even, the
civilian life that seems so unreal now will be the
real, and the old soldier life the unreal. I shall
not in my walks find my eyes wandering " with a
vague surmise " over the nearest hilltops in search
of Boers, nor measuring unconsciously the range
from the top of Table Mountain, which I find myself
doing even as I write this, looking up at it through
the window. The trekking, the fighting, the croak
of the invisible rifle, the glare of the sun, the row of
swarthy determined faces, the roar of horse hoofs,
all this, and the lounging days by river banks (shoot-
ing guinea-fowl and springbuck), will drop back and
be shut off from one's life to rise now and then, \

V7 p

21 8 WITH RIMINGTON

suppose, with the creeping of an old excitement in
one's memory^

There was a heavy gloom on the last days of
my soldiering. It was at Naauwpoort that I first
joined the Guides. We stopped there coming
down. There was the waiting-room, the very table
I had slept on ; the sun-baked flat where first I
met the Major; the slopes where our tents were
pitched — Lord I how the sight of the place brings
it all back, and how different everything has turned
out from what we expected ; it was there that I
joined, and it was there, travelling down with our
time-expired men, that we first heard the news of
the Queen's death. You at home will feel this
deeply— of course every one must — but I can't help
thinking that out here, far away from home and
fighting, one feels it even more. I am almost
surprised at minding so much. There is an
irksome sense at the back of one's mind, even
when one is thinking of other things — of loss, of
something wanting. England seems less England
to me than it did and I less of an Englishman.
It gives a faint satisfaction to have been one of
her soldiers at the end.

I will spare you my raptures on reaching Cape
Town and seeing the woods and clear streams and
sea again. The change from a comparatively
barren country to the richly-wooded slopes under
Table Mountain, and the burst of sparkling sea
beyond is quite sudden. At one step, in the
twinkling of an eye, you pass from monotony and
desolation and the old life of the veldt into every-
thing that is most lovely and suggestive of freedoin

PLAIN MISTER 219

and variety. Huge Table Mountain rises high
over the town, its steep slopes wooded with forests
of pine and oak. Gorge-like narrow passages wind
into the upright precipices of rock and separate
them into great pinnacles of grey stone. I clambered
up there a few days ago, through hot-smelling pine
woods, heaths of all sorts, evergreens and flowers,
clear water like Scotch burns coming down among
the rocks with its toss of white froth [and amber
pools, and such a view, when one got to the top,
down over the whispering woods and out over the
flat sea !

The sea was the thing that beat all — ** the great
sea perfect as a flower," — ^the sight of it was a stab.
There are great four-masted barques and full-rigged
ships lying at the wharfs and outside — double t'gal-
lant yarders, my boy ; I yelled at them by way of
greeting down across the tree-tops.

Nearer in lies a long black steamer, a transport.
She is an ugly looking old tub, but in my eyes
perfect Handsome is as handsome does. She
takes us home to-morrow, my pony and me.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson 6* Cq,
gdinbuTj^h 6" Londop

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